Reflection

Assignment 3

Reflection 

BEIL 0014

Digital  Making

It's very important to master the skill of Model making, especially  Industrial  Design students. Model can present your concepts and ideas from imagination to reality, and it will be easier to make people understand your design concept.

This is my first-time contact Metal making, in previous four years, I have never thought metal when I try to make a model, I usually use foam, wood, clay, cardboard, etc. Because the course teaches us about these materials and how to use it, so they limited my ways of thinking.

After 3 months of Digital Making study, I got lots of knowledge about processing metal, and it's easier than what I thought before. I master another good skill in model making, and it can save lots of time on the shaped simple model.

During Assignment 1 by compare my bowl and Jin's bowl, it shows lost of problems.

Jin's Bowl

It's the first time both of us learn this course, but Jin's product is better than min. I find a few points that Jin make his bowl become more and more perfect.  

1. Patient- remake the surface by hammer and English wheel, remove the most of potholes on the surface and polished. It's the same thing to other 3 products if I can't handle these details then I can not make a good product.

2. Research- After I fished my bowl, I just leave it away in my work bag. I have never thought to polish it cause I did not know it before.  But a lot of students do it, so at last, I got low marks for my work. That means a good preparation will help you a lot. 

Experience 

After the first project, I thought this course it's too easy until I making the  Torus, Tray, and Blister. I spend more and more time on each of the product. Why? Because there is a very difficult point to shape the metal, metal is a kind of solid material, not like paper or rubber it's hard to form a very accurate shape which you want to build. If you changed one area whole part will be affected then you need to fix other areas. And this problem was very obviously in the ass 3 Fuel tank making.

        

As the picture shows that when I try to use English wheel to change the front part's radians the back part's radians also changed, it's like a kind of balance. The way to fix this problem is change the edge or middle softly time by time and the metal should be obey by your hands.

Another difficult thing I met was the metal may fold together, like in ass2 when I make the tray all four corners appear the fold condition. 

        

Then the same problem comes out from fuel tank making.

 

The solution to this problem is hammering both sides and then cut the extra part make the metal just cover the model.

Overall, I change my mind about the value of using metal to making model. Form this course I know that metal is quaint material it needs accurate measurement and carefully process. Use more patient and research can create a better shape of the product. It's very important to me to know the knowledge, cause as a designer I will contact different way of design and this course help me build a very solid'foundation'. Thanks to all course tutors, thanks for their help, I will learn to use in the future.