Project 2: Reverse Engineered Object (Week 1: Select)

 The second project we'll be working on is to reverse engineered object.

To provide more information about the engineered object, it is a mechanical object that is complex or multiple parts and inherently made up of several components and assembled. Additionally, it should contain moving parts that interact with each other. This week, I will select few items and take a look at their parts and decide whether they are adequate for this project. After selecting an object among them, I will measure this object as precise as possible using caliper and re-build this each part of this object as 3D file using Rhino and eventually assemble them into a holistic piece.

In this post, I am taking a closer look to figure out the objects I chose will be adequate for this project.

I selected 3 items that are a ball point pen, a stapler, and a circle cutter. The reasons why I chose them are as follow: They are mechanical objects that are made up with some parts that interact each other. And their shapes are relatively simple. Additionally, they are made up with less than 10 pieces, so it will be possible to build it in Rhino in given time. Below are the detailed photos of the selected objects and the parts.

1. Stapler

Limitations :

1. It is impossible to completely dissemble it unless I break it. It should be hard to measure parts individually and figure out the mechanical process of it.

2. And the problem above will lead to hardship of rebuilding it in Rhino.

2. Ball Point Pen

Looks adequate for the project, since it is involving some pieces that has interesting shapes. To provide more information, the stem of the pen is not perfectly cylinder, it has narrower and fuller side, which will be interesting to represent in Rhino. Other smaller parts, which is other cylinder looking red pieces or grey corn like parts has ragged edges for grabbing each other and make the button work. I think other parts are pretty challenging to represent.

3. Circle Cutter

 

This object seems to have parts that have geometric shape on my first look, but it should be not just easy to build this since it has lots of edges and details in their shapes. For example, the back side of the yellow part has lots of edges and the black part in the photo seems to have lots of details including extruded text as well.

Limitation : some of the parts are really thin, so it might be hard to measure even with caliper. Should double check it after getting the tool.

Conclusion : I think I will learn a lot from re-building circle cutter, so I would like to proceed with this object. I think I can benefit from small amount of the parts.