Woodworking Final Project Documentation – Damon's Documentation Blog

Create a documentation blog post for your final project. When you are done, post a link to

Your blog post should cover the following topics:
– Demonstrate an understanding of the steps involved in the production (fabrication) of your workpiece.
– Document each fabrication step. Include photos and/or video, a description, of what the step was, how it was used, and why it was necessary.
– Describe the tools that you used. This may be incorporated into the fabrication steps.
– Discuss the design. Why did you choose it? Were there any inspirations? If you have photo documentation from the design stage (such as a scan of photograph your sketch or inspirations), include this in the post.
– What (if anything) surprised you during the process of fabrication – about the tools, the material, what was easy or hard? What did you learn?
– Knowing what you know now, if you were to start over again, would you make any changes to your original design design? What is advice that you would send to your former self?
– If you were to build a similar project, what would you keep the same from this project? What would be different? [The previous question asks: how would you have done *this project differently*. This question asks: if you could keep this project, and do *another project too*, what would you do to expand your portfolio and refine your craft.]
– Include high-quality photography (using professional equipment) of your project

The due date for this assignment is at midnight on Thursday. Note that there is another assignment to meet with me at least eight hours after your have completed your blog post. If you wait until the due date, then you need to meet with me on Friday. If you would prefer to meet with me earlier in the week, you must submit your documentation blog post earlier.

Design

Fabrication

Fabrication Steps:

Cutting

Arrange each piece into six separate vector files (DXF)
Cut all 79 pieces with the CNC router

2. Planning/Preparation

Lable and assemble the pieces in sequence
Insert and cut dowels (8mm diameter) accordingly
Separate the piece into larger parts according to dowels for easier lamentation and grinding
Enlarge the dowel holes for easy assembly and gluing with a round file and 8mm diameter drill its

3. Actual Fabrication

Lamentation
Grinding (with an angle grinder in rounded metal bits)
Smoothing & Sanding (with an angle grinder in flat sanding bits & Portale power sander)

I decided to build it from the bottom up, separating them into three main parts: the base, the body/columns, and the top. I went back and forth with the process listed above.

Cutting:

A good thing about Slicer is that it automatically arrange and label the sliced pieces in vector forms and you could export them to illustrator as SVG form. However, a bug from the latest update of the CNC software incorrectly resizes your SVG file 15% smaller. I and Andy couldn’t figure out a way to rescale it (there is probably a way to rescale it according to Jasper). So I had to abandon the previous SVG files and use Rhino to export the shapes in DXF format. I spent a lot of time configuring the pieces in Rhino for minimal waste of material. It would be much easier to use Adobe Illustrator and would be less time-consuming if I didn’t care about saving materials.

I made a lot of mistakes during the cutting process. Instead of 15mm plywood boards, Andy and I used 18mm boards. So the design is way taller than what was planned. I mistakenly used 18mm for the first board so it was not cut through. I had to use the band saw after.

I wasted a huge amount of time using the CNC. One thing I learned is that you should always check the thickness and size of your board before any routing or cutting. Unfortunately, I made the same mistake twice the second day after deciding to use 18mm. I didn’t check the thickness of the board provided by Andy (15mm this time). I was so confused why all the tabs were coming off during the cutting process. I discovered this mistake at the end of the day. So I ended up wasting more material than previously planned.