Week 12 - Practical 3

 Welcome back to our blog!

In practical 3, we learnt about prototyping using cardboard. Cardboard is an inexpensive material and is used for producing small-scale prototypes before putting the idea into manufacturing. This is to prevent any design losses made during the manufacturing, as prototypes help to emphasize them easily. The prototype can then be redone as many times as possible until it is perfectly created and optimised.

You may ask, "But isn't cardboard... flat?" That's true, however it can be folded, cut and even glued together to create a 3D model. To give you more information about the material, here is our literature review on the material.

Corrugated Fibreboard is similar to cardboard as they are both made of paper-based materials. However corrugated fibreboard has fluting on the inside between 2 boards. The fluting, which are wavy-shaped structures, is glued to a paperboard and then combined with a linerboard which reinforces it by resisting bending and pressure from all directions. Corrugated Fibreboards can be made out of multiple fluting and linerboards to create a stronger material. 2 types of paper are used for liners, Kraft and Test liners. Kraft, being the strongest type of paper and easiest to be printed, tends to be used as an outside liner. Test paper on the other hand is double layered paper which is not as strong as Kraft or easy to print on, but it is less costly than Kraft paper.

On the day of the practical, we went to SP Fablab. A huge place that caters to the creative minds of students and staff alike. 3D printers, laser cutters and so much more are found there.

We were then tasked to create a showcase of eight joineries using cardboard. A joinery is a method of how two or more cardboard pieces are put together to make a smoother finish and/or better stability. Afterwards, we presented our visual board to the class.

The process of creating the joineries was enjoyable! Most of the joineries we created had no problems. We learnt about how to create scores, which are vertical cuts on a cardboard to allow it to bend out from its' 90 degree angle. Here are some photos of the process, as well as the final product.

Jun Weng doing some cuts

Brayden punching holes 

Final product

Presentation

After this task, we had a post-experiment where we needed create a winged unicorn using cardboard. The cardboard is pre-cut and thus did not require any manual creation of joints.

Firstly, the parts are taken out of the cut cardboard. The bends are folded so that it is easier to maneuver and attach to other parts. 

We then start with putting together the body. The body is a singular piece and thus it uses slots and tabs to create the body shape as shown here. 

Afterwards, we attach the wings on its side. The tab end of the wings are put onto the slot on the body. We also folded along the semi-circle cuts of the wings to provide more texture.

As we need to make the wings retract, we placed a rubber band attached to the grooves of the wings' tabs through the body's front. We also twirl the rubber band twice so that the wings would not detach when they move.

Next, we create the head. Like the body, the head is a singular piece and uses the same joints. However, after attaching the head to the body like the others, the head would easily slip off. Thus, the end at which the head is joined is folded once inserted into the slot, making a tab. This prevents it from coming out so easily. 

The rubber band would be coming out of the centered hole, thus we wrapped it on the unicorn's nose both for aesthetics and so that the head would attach to the body better.

Lastly, the attachments. The tail, hair and horn are placed onto their respective slots around the body and head.

And voila! Here is our final product and a short demonstration of the wings:

Kids nowadays need to see their toys in action, rather than them doing the action. Hence, we need to automate it in a way that is accessible and straight-forward for anyone to play with the toy. One way is to attach the rubber band to a wheel. There is a stick to place the rubber band on the opposite side of the wheel. A rotation would be a full cycle of the wings flapping. 

Another way would be to make it like the rubber band airplanes. The rubber band is placed on a hook and is then twirled for a few revolutions until it is let go, leading to a continuous amount of flapping.

Thank you for reading!