This is the illusion I made in replace of the A-mazing maze, as I had done one last year. I created a set of questions and made 3 different illusions of which I showed my dad. You can see on the bottom the illusions I made and on the top the questions he answered. I think this project showed my ability to use AutoCAD well, especially since I did not have a pre-defined criteria to go off of.

On the bottom is my 1 point-perspective drawing, which I gave a western theme, showing a horse stable and old-timey shops the outskirts of the town have a desert-like look with the cactuses and tumbleweeds blowing by in the background, and the snake in the right hand corner, as well as a generally “dusty” look.

On the top is my 4-point perspective drawing, showcasing a corner of a street, with a futuristic look, as one of the houses/buildings has a portal in it, and the shops could be considered with having a “futuristic” look.

These are all the different stickers I created, starting with the emoji that I made using which i took from inspiration from the question emoji, but i wanted to try to make it my own, than a green and red planet that if I could do again I would choose different colors for. I then extended that into the mushroom frog, which took lots of trial and error, as some of the more intricate details on the frog and the edges of the mushroom affected how the final cut was looking. Afterward I attempted to create a sticker of a frog with my leftover scrap on a log, but the log sticker ended up looking a little funky, as I didn’t properly measure the frog compared to the log.

Using the file of the frog I had I decided to fix up the edges on it to make it more smooth, and then cut a new green one, which I added to my laptop as decoration. If I were to do this project again I would change the color to a slightly darker green, as I think the light green stands out to much on my black laptop. I would also of liked to added a pink bit to the mouth to show that the frog has a tongue, but other than that I believe it turned out quite well.

This is my Kirby model I made in blender, creating a small 3-d printed model. I started with a bunch of smaller circles in blender, and then used the Boolean and sculpt tools to  morph and combine the small circles into the Kirby. I ran into issues with the 3-d print at the edges of the mouth, as the sculpt tool doesn’t leave the best topography for 3-d printing, so the 3-d printer made the mouth jagged. I feel if I had spent a little more time on making sure my export’s were in a different file format that worked better with 3-d printing and blender I could of not had the this issue.

I decided to create some bananas in blender as a way to test the “decimate” modifier and see if I could make something in low poly. Inside the blender file It looked exactly how I wanted, but once I exported and 3-d printed it all the edges of the build were stringing, and this led to a rougher look on the bananas. It can also be mentioned that the top of the banana (the “stalk”) had to low of an infill density, and crumpled in my hand when I was clearing the banana of the stringing. Nevertheless the final print quality wasn’t the worst, and this model helped me learn more about how intricate/what settings you need when 3-d printing smaller more higher-detail objects.

The next model I created was a two color flat model of snoopy from the comic strip and movie “Peanuts”. I used Inkscape to trace the bitmap of the clearest image I found of him online, and then exported it in svg so that I could import it into blender. One of blender’s built-in modifiers is the “Solidify” modifier, which can make flat .svg and .bit images into flat 3-d objects. After changing some settings around to get the size I wanted I had the outline of snoopy I needed. I Then added a cube into the plane and used edit mode to move the cube into the inner space of the outline. I then lowered its height slightly to get the white “outline” look on the model. I had to export the outline and the inner in 2 separate files and then put them together in Cura to get them to print in different colors, choosing black and white as my colors as that was the original colors of snoopy.

   I originally started my “Big” drafting project with the idea of recreating a cardboard M1A2 Abrams Tank, but after starting the initial plans in AutoCAD I realized that that would not be possible within the timeframe I had set for myself, so I scrapped the original idea and started work on the tank idea, but this time the Stug III .F from Germany in the WW1-WW2 era. This tank design was significantly easier to as it was a much simpler tank. The above image shows how far I got into the design process of my first tank, and some of the parts I reused when I created the treads of my second plan.

The above image shows my plans in the laser cutting software for the tank treads. I created this using actual blueprint plans of the Stug III.F, so all I had to do was trace the image in AutoCAD, something I have become quite accustomed to. I did need to change a lot of the parts though, and design it to work in a way with the 2-d shape of cardboard, (as the original tank was designed to be mostly built in one piece). This part took the most time, as I wanted to make sure it looked the most realistic while also being manageable to put together. I believe the end result was good, but in the future I would make sure to use the same type of cardboard for each side, as the right side of the tank was made using a weaker cardboard, and therefore looks significantly smaller and misshapen.

Once I had laser cut the treads for the tank it was simply a matter of glueing the pieces together. I had to measure the middle part, and decide upon a fair radius for the hole in the top, as I had the idea to make the gun spin as a real tank would be able to. My measurements were (mostly) correct, and this reflected in the general cleaner nature of the top and front part of the tank. I would of liked to have the gun hole be a touch smaller, as the current size makes it hard to include smaller details on the top of the tank that I would of liked to add (such as tread armor).

This is the piece I designed to go into the hole In the top of the base of the tank, and I could glue on the top part of the tank to create a sort of spinning feature as a real tank would have. Although I do not have an image for it I did import this file into fusion to put a hole into it, to both reduce the print time and make it lighter so it wouldn’t press down to hard on the cardboard. If I had to do this again I might make the small edges that i put on a little less steep, but this was one of the most successful parts of the project.

I next created the top part of the tank, doing smaller measurements to make sure it lined up. I ran into the issue of the lack of surface area to glue the parts together, but I made do (despite lots of sticky fingers). I would of liked to have made the gun a little smaller and more round, but the tighter timeframe made that harder to do. As this is also my passion project (to make something like this into an rc car) I can improve on this idea for my next tank the rest of the year.

After the part was 3-d printed and the cardboard glued together I glued them together to finally (mostly) finish the project. I had slightly mis-measured the size of the printed part, so the cardboard didn’t fully fit on top of it, but with a little pushing I got it in place.

This is the final project I am handing in. I am most likely going to spend the last week of the semester adding smaller details and fixing up some of the smaller issues with the build. I believe this build showed what I learned in both 3-d printing and laser cutting, and when I add the smaller details it will also show my knowledge in sticker-cutting. I would of preferred to have had more time to spend on the top part, as the few days I did have affected the true quality I believe I could put out with more time to take measurements and think of ideas to better design and fit the top part. This was a fun project to make with many problems along the way. It helped teach me what to do and what not to do for my passion project this year, and can now be another model on my desk!

During the coming weeks I plan to both add smaller details using the laser cutter and stick cutter to the tank, but also to design a print a few smaller models from different shows that I enjoy, as the process of designing and creating the models in blender is a fun process.