Category Archives: development

Glow wood, effects video

 

Working prototype, to show the engineer the where sensors should be set…

This is a result of myself experimenting with 2 composite materials…wood and acrylic. I found a way that the light can travel through the wood. The studio song was not intentional but strangely fits this short prototype video.

Reclaimed wood and glow testing

Some photos from prototyping today. I figured out how I can allow the light to travel through composite various materials to create a glowing grain effect. Tomorrow I will take the rhino 3d model and cut out the same effect using the cnc machine…

chipboard table for prototype
cut grain lines to allow the glow to shine through
daylight glow
chipboard before lighting
the glowing effect
anticipated result
wihout composite material the led’s cannot saturate…instead they appear as three individual spot lights
light travel through acrylic tubing
lighting effect using 2 led’s

material selection

The majority of my final design will be made from recycled wood. To give the design a great quality finish I will work with used wood where I will sand it and cut it in various ways to find the most ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing style. Because my theory work has covered subtle concepts throughout the development stage to compliment the idea of my design I will carry on this theme with the final product. To do this I will use the rapid prototype machine to cut into the table top to extrude grain-like shapes so that the light can glow through these. This will allow the wood to look like it is naturally glowing and I hope by keeping a natural theme, the end product will have a greater ability to connect with it’s users ‘naturally’.

 

These are some images from the last few days as I have been closely looking at form and material selection.

Rhino model of table top

 

Video

A brief LED test.

Despite almost going blind and having blind spots in my eyes after this process, my friend (an electrical engineer student) and myself were testing LED’s from a circuit board to work out the battery voltage we would need to allow the LED’s to shine as bright as I wanted. We fiddled around with the board and decided 4V was too much as the LED turned blue. The maximum brightness and best brightness from these will be 3.5 V therefore I will use 3V LED’s with 12V batteries meaning I can have 4 LED’s connecting to one battery.

The brightness of the LED is important for this design as I need the glow to almost penetrate the wood that I am using. The glow must be visible to the users of the table. I will follow up this post with further material selection for the end product.

first formal chat…with the engineer

I am of to have dinner with a masters electrical engineering student from my university. I need to find out:

How can I let these lights sense people using the table? How can I get the lights to have a sequence that will connect from on persons space to the next and how can the whole table eventually glow when the table full?

These are some photos from testing wood with basic LED lights to see what effects these two materials can create…

Making something look real…

A few days ago I mocked up a quick and basic sketch of my final design Untitled-2. However, I have to speak to a few people from digital media and from the engineering school so I plan to make this sketch look real. Hopefully after these two tutorials:

http://layersmagazine.com/night-lights-creating-a-glowing-neon-effect.html

http://vectips.com/tutorials/create-a-wood-grain-texture/

 

I am aiming to take these tutorials and apply them to my design in illustrator to give create a clear effect of how my design will look and work.

 

 

Bringing lights to identify personal space…development stage.

Initial LED testing
Connections, light effects

These are a few of the first photos I have taken from the process of creating the final piece. The final piece will be complete in 6 weeks but you will not be able to tell what it is until you see it. I will just be posing various photos along the way…

work update…before prototyping week

I designed a quick version of a ‘coffee pole’ aimed at allowing strangers to feel comfortable with each other in a captive environment, in this case: the university cafe. The reason for the prototype was to find out where and how people would prefer to stand in relation to someone they did not know whilst using the same drink stand. I did not know what the results would be as I don’t know how each person thinks however the results brought back a correlation from the people who used the pole.

1. 90% of the people preferred if a stranger stood opposite them. This was to do with eye-contact and knowing what that person is doing. It is important for people to know what others around them are doing in order for them to feel at ease.

2. The other 10% would allow a stranger to stand by their side whilst using the design. These people said that being in a captive environment, it  is normal to be close to others in it. Because a captive environment is not always a small space however it may be a large space like a festival or shopping mall where the swarms of people then create a captive space due to the amount of people passing through and using the space.

One person also wrote a note on the pole on some lines I’d provided and they said:

‘”would individual coffee shelves not separate people rather than connect them?”

I took this thought on board along with the other results and I will post more photos up soon with further development for this project.

Video

David Kelley- How to build creative confidence

This man is really interesting and an inspiration. His understanding and experience of product design just seems so natural. I like people like this where they put others first and their passion first before the idea of making huge amounts of money.