Sunday, March 7, 2010

Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design

Chris Lefteri

Yesterday i went to India Wood 2010 at BIEC, Peenya. Its an international exhibition of woodworking machinery, tools, fittings,accessories, raw materials and products. It was really great!Although i was a little upset as i spent almost all of my time in the machinery sections and didnt have much time in the raw material section(what i originally went for!). But anyways it was a really good experience. I saw processes i had been reading about, i also showed my little land prototype to a lot of people and got their suggestions and feedback!

Here the machine is being used to laminate mdf cabinet doors. It was a really interesting procedure. I'm not sure what the process is called but i had read about something similar, called Thermoforming.

There were several stalls working the CNC router. It was great to watch the intricate designs it was capable of producing,not so great to watch the wood wastage!! I spoke to some of them and showed them the little land prototype and told them i was planning to use laser cutting. They said a CNC would be able to cut it easily and it wouldnt even burn the edges and make it black like the laser cutter. He said that it costs about Rs.200-300/sq ft, or Rs.500-600/hr to cut using a CNC router.

HonECOre is an eco-friendly bio-degradable and non toxic paper honeycomb

made out of recycled and recycleable craft paper to provide the best quality , longetivity and dimentional stability to your products. HonECOre is an extremely versatile product that allows you to replace many core materials used today in a economic and eco-friendly fashion. Being a paper product, it is easy to work with, harmless in handling, dimensionally stable .It also exhibits dual properties of being flexible and high strength depending on the application or the process of application.

www.honecore.com

There was an entire hall of wood dealers!lots and lots of amazing looking American Hardwoods! They had everything-Alder, Ash, Cherry, Hard Maple, Soft Maple, Red Oak, White Oak, Tulipwood, Walnut etc. Ofcourse they were expensive options, and so i spoke to some of them asking them whhat they thought i should use. The really liked the idea and suggested Teak if i wanted a really high end quality product or something like Beech wood which is not very expensive, easy to work with, and although its a really light colored wood it was be dyed to pretty much any color. There was also a stall on compressed bamboo which i missed!:(

This really excite me:) It was a really cool router for sanding. The sand paper were circular in shape and attached to the router using a really thin and soft velcro for easy/quick changing. Its great to watch them work it, makes the surface sooooo smooth!If i go ahead with laser cutting, ill probably need to sand(with a different sander though) the edges to get rid of the black soot after laser cutting.

India Wood exposed me greatly to several tools and processes and alot of other things that i didnt have much knowledge about and is really new to me. Awesome!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

i got me wood..lalala:)

So i got some rubberwood cut for Lakshmi timbers. Now i can give it to the laser cutter to get some pieces made to get an idea of whether it works in rubberwood or if i need to try the same using a different wood type. Each of the pieces i got sliced were of 4mm thickness. This was done using the process iv mentioned in the previous post.

I asked them how much the same thing(4*2 ft wood,cutting and plaining) would cost for the 4 different wood types, using the same procedure, including the labor cost etc, to compare. This is what he said:

Rubber - Rs. 103

Beach - Rs. 150

Australian Honne - Rs. 165

Teak - Rs. 215

lakshmi timbers

Today i visited another wood supplier in Yelahanka, Lakshmi timbers. This place had wood i could get in smaller quantities! So now i hopefully dont have to go all the way to Bamboo Bazaar to inquire about every little thing. There wasnt much of a price difference either. The different woods i looked at were Rubber wood, Teak, Beach, Australian Honne. The smallest size he had was 4*2 ft. I asked him to slice it into pieces of 3 mm thickness each but they said it would chip and break if they made it any thinner than 4 mm. They cut it into 5 pieces using a wood cutting machine and then passed them through the plaining machine to smoothen it. Each piece was 4mm thick.

He said there may be chances of the toy pieces breaking if i used any of the above woods and that it would be best for me to use Silver wood(it's cheaper too).

I also got samples of Teak and Beach. I spent a total of Rs. 190 there. This was mostly because i had them cut very little, specifically for which they had to turn on the machines. My heart ached to see the amount of power and wood wasted in the process :(

Band saw:

Wood plaining machine:

designing for re-use

Lately i have been looking at all kinds of packaging and reading up on it a whole lot.Here's a great book Anders suggested,that i'm reading right now:

Designing for Re-Use

The Life of Consumer Packaging
By Tom Fisher and Janet Shipton

I pretty much ignored the reuse aspect of packaging until now even though its all around! This book began to change that. I think this is a very important aspect that one needs to know of before looking at designing packaging.

Packaging is ephemeral - its purpose is to be "wasted" once we've removed the product it contains. The re-use of packaging could have a significant effect on the quantity of material that enters the waste stream and the energy and consequently carbon that is expended in its production - every re-used item is another item not purchased. The book shows that by understanding the ways in which actions of this sort fit with everyday life, opportunities may be identified to enhance the potential for re-use through packaging design. The authors itemize the factors that affect the re-use of packaging, and analyse the home as a system in which objects are processed.

helping hands:)

I asked my classmates to make pieces that they would like in little land.They made their own house,tree,car:)it was a sweet exercise.i did this to see what others came up with and i also wanted to break away from my usual style of drawing curves and things!:)it was another way of brainstorming.These are some of the things they cut out: