evaluation

Overall I am happy with the turn out of my mp3 player. The lead up to the final model went well but some drastic changes were made towards the end of the course which meant the entire model needed to be reconstructed digitally before the final could be made.The light experiments came in helpful when working with the acrylic and trying to get the glowing effect.  I managed to power my circuits with small 12v batteries that were strong enough make them work properly rather than having bulky 9v batteries that were quite heavy and created space issues. For the final model I printed it in separate pieces on the uprint so that it would be stable enough and not have any support meaning I could get the LED strip into a very tight place without having to break the model up any further.  The main idea i was going for was to have a detachable disk that would work similar to a flash drive and could be connected to a dock that was anywhere. the disk was also used for 'steering' the music or what ever is on the screen and would bounce back to give it a definitive single click button function. It was also supposed to move in 4 directions but I found that by adding the extra movement it eliminated its ability to rotate around the central axis so that was disappointing.  I thought that the disk idea worked well with the almost tron like song that I picked and also the idea steering the music which stemmed from the structure of the mp3 player, linking to the fact that the song is about a car chase.Overall the final model worked well and the contact switch functioned perfectly and the only thing I would do differently is print out the main base on black so that the light would focus on the acrylic screen rather than the body of the mp3 player.

random shtuff

illustrator file of some of the light experiments

light experiment with the diamond effect made by the support generated by the printer to go in the hollow spaces

 this was just another failed print that I made trying to get the up printers to work

 I made this disk with the idea of making the model in one piece and putting the disk in afterwards to avoid any awkward joins but once I had made the disk I found it was difficult to blur together with out leaving messy marks all over it.  I also realised that the model had to open anyway to allow the circuitry to get inside.

circuitry and other things

this is the first circuit I tried out, it was contained within the dick housing but the space was too small for the switch I had so I tried taking it you be the space was too complicated to work with so I eventually stopped trying to make it work.  the switch would have worked by putting something throughout the hole created on the top panel Which I originally ctreated fof the purpose of a smaller switch.

this is and example of the spring mechanism that made the bounce switch in the disk and also the magnets that hold the two components together.

 i then moved on to the contact switch that was mounted on the inside edge so that the disk housing would click into place and close the circuit.  This was achieved by attaching magnets to the inside of the disc housing and the dock which held the two pieces together well.

failed models and mistakes

 this is the base off of my physical concept that didn't work properly,  It peeled off the raft as it was printing and began to split part way through the model.  The 3d printers seem to be a bit hit-and-miss with wether the print actually works

the remaining three pieces of the failed models I made. The rest were thrown away before I could get hold of them But over all I think I had to print each piece 2 maybe 3 times before i would get a good model.( excluding the print)

these are all the digital models that I tried to make and and got confused and gave up on.  Some of them were models that I developed  and couldn't make them fit and work together so I had to keep reconstructing the same model so now I can pretty much construct the model from memory.

final digital model

this is the illustrator file created for the disk which originally had the final base plate as well but I accidentally deleted the file it was in and was only left with this one

the disk base and disk assembled to see what it would look like  before I print it

 development for creating the dock the the disk is mounted into

 assembled model unrendered testing how the pieces fit together

 disk base

 partial disk concept

rendered concept and physical version

rendered concept before I printed the model for it

with this model I tried a few experiments including working with how the different pieces would join and how the disk would work  I decided to try making it so that the disk could come out but the mechanism for taking the lid off was a bit more fiddly than expected so it didn't quite work how I wanted it to I also hollowed it out so that I could work out how the circuit would fit in