tube bending!

For mass production class, we learned about tube bending. Our project was to design a half scale bicycle rack. This was fun because we had a non standard curve which meant that we had to devise a different way to bend the tube without using the standard 2" radius tube bender things. Some students even bent their metal tubes around the architecture pillars.

Anyway my partner and I chose to design a leaf bicycle rack that sprouts from the ground. Soooo eco-themed!

bending a metal tube is easy peasy

thermoforming!

For our mass pro class we learned about thermoforming. Now that I know about it and its process, I see it being used everywhere.

 

Anyway for our group, we decided to make a food box. We picked the logo design for this year's tee-shirt, put it in CAD and sent it to the CNC machine. I was pretty glad we did it that way because the CNC is so much faster and you can get all sorts of cool things cut out of the wood vs making the mold by hand (which is what many of my classmates were doing)
The first time seeing the thermoforming machine work its magic was was soooo fascinating. After the 6th time however, not so much. Actually, for our first trial run of the lid, we couldn't get the plastic off the mold. All three shop technitions had to pull on it...Two holding the plastic and one holding the wood mold. In the end I think we had to cut it out. From then on, we used a demolding spray thing which helped a LOT. hehe.