Flat Pack Childs Chair - Practical Diary

16/02/07

Today, now that I had my pieces cut into manageable sizes, I started doing the fiddly stuff. First of all I started cutting down the left side of my chair on the scroll saw. But just as I finished, and removed my wood, and was about to turn the machine off, the blade broke. I am still not sure how that happened. So I continued my work with a coping saw, I secured my MDF tightly into a bench clamp, and carefully sawed around he face and neck of the giraffe. I was really pleased at how that had gone, it looked neat, and I just sanded off some rough edges with some glass paper, and it looked very nice and child friendly. I then spent the remainder of the lesson squaring off the seat, front and back of the chair.

Next lesson I plan to cut the slots out of all of my pieces, and if I finish that, start neatening up the second giraffe shaped piece of MDF.

5/3/07

Today, with all of my pieces cut out, I started cutting out the slots that the pieces would go into to put the chair together. I used the scroll saw for this because it is the fastest way to do it, and after the next lesson I am missing a week as I am on a German Exchange, so I had to work very productively, and make the very most of the time I had. I think I did very well in the time given, and managed to cut out all but 2 of the slots, which is quite a lot considering there are so many slots on my chair. For homework I decided to take the sides of my chair home, so I could sand them down and save the lesson time for things that could only be done in the lesson.

Next lesson I plan to continue cutting out the slots, and then start finishing off my chair with some sandpaper, sanding down all of the rough edges.

Using a Boxford CNC Router

These instructions tell you how to create a piece of work with a Boxford CNC Router: (CNC stands for computer numerically controlled)

1. Open up the Boxford programme on the computer
2. Click "open G&M file"
3. Click the picture of the Boxford machine, which looks like this,
   
4. Press the autohome button
5. Press "fit workpiece"
6. Open the guard up on the front of the machine
7. Fit the sacrificial bed into the back left hand corner
8. Sweep off any dust
   
9. Fix the workpiece onto the sacrificial bed using double sided selotape. Make sure you affix the tape so that all of the pieces will have some tape behind them
10. Sweep of any dust and press down hard on the workpiece to make sure it is securely fastened
11. Using a Digital Vernier Caliper enter measure the distance from the table to the workpiece then enter it into the computer
12. Shut the guard on the machine
13. Press the flashing green button on the machine
14. Open the machine guard
    
15. Fit a 3.2 milimetre cutter then use a jig to adjust it into the correct possistion
16. Tighten it with a spanner
17. Lock the guard
18. Press the green button on the machine
19. Do a visual check to see if the cutter is in place
20. Press the green button

Now the machine will do the rest!







A Boxford CNC Router







A digital vernier caliper

Container Project

Conclusion

In my project I decided to make a box for the Nintendo DS Lite, and I am reasonably pleased with the outcome. Unfortunaltey, the project brief was to make a container that was not a box. so my project did not fit the brief, it was a box, but it is interesting, it has a flip up lid and a draw. My box certainly works, the DS fits well inside the box, and the games go neatly into the draw, it can hold around 20 games, which is very good. The one problem is that the DS compartment is not padded, so if the box was being shaken about, it could scratch. I was planning on putting padding in, but when i tried it all fell apart, as I tried to wrap fabric around foam, it probably woul have been easier to just line the compartment with felt, or another soft material. although my box looks quite stylish, and i am fairly happy with the paint finish, as it is not easy to get a good finish on MDF. It is very plain, just white, all the way round. I was planning on having the DS logo (two squares on top of each other) and I had almost finished them, and it had taken me quite a long time, just as i was getting the glue ready to stick it to the box, I lost it. as this was in the final lesson there was not time to make another, but to resolve this problem I really should have made the same logo but out of sticky vinyl. Besides these promblems though, I do think I managed my time fairly well, although I should have found something to do whilst paint was drying, sometimes i didn't do anything, which wasted time. And no, my container does not fit the brief, but it does look good, and i honestly think that people would buy it, as it is a useful place to store your DS and games at home when it is not in use. I did learn lots of new technuques in this project though, I learnt about the rounter machine, applying hinges, MDF paints, the strucure of MDF (not to screw vertically into it, as MDF is like a deck of cards, it will split. I had to overcome this problem by drilling a hole, filling it with glue, and then pushing the screws in like that), and lots of other little things. so all in all, not bad.

Resistant Materials 2006

This is my Resistant Materials website. I will be storing on this site:

• Pictures
• Project diary
• Links to my friend's DT stuff
• Infomation

And probably some more stuff when I think of this, check back soon to see how my projects are getting along.