By: Kitty Colton, Delaney McLynch, Fenya Savage Mantell, Shelby Bernstein, and Hannah Car. Final project for ME10, Materials and Manufacturing, Fall 2024.

Design Goals: 

In this project, we used the static forms we reviewed in class to explore movement in manufacturing. We hoped to further our understanding of various manufacturing processes— including sand casting, sheet metal water jetting & bending, acrylic laser cutting, and 3D printing— and material properties— such as ductility and tensile strength— in a creative manner. After designing and manufacturing the individual fish pieces, the construction and assembly of the mobile structure gave us practical experience in larger-scale production and the maintenance and cohesion of many smaller pieces—something we have explored in SolidWorks but not in true practice. 

Process: 

To start this process, we first sat down and discussed our potential ideas, trying to figure out ways that we could incorporate everyone’s ideas into one cohesive piece. Another thing we had to think about was access to material and actual ability to create the structure. Weighing our options with the manufacturability and time constraints, we landed on a mobile made of fish that we would make using different materials and manufacturing materials.

Once we established our design and dimensions, we split into teams to cover the different kinds of fish and processes to make them. Each manufacturing team had different approaches to complete their fish/hoops:

For the 3D printing process, we started with looking at different inspiration pictures of fish to base my CAD design off of. Once we had ideas, we began to CAD two different designs, one with dimensions of about one by two inches and the other with dimensions of about two by three inches. We struggled a little bit with making the fish 3-dimensional. Making them 2D was no problem, but to actually make them round proved to be a challenge. We wanted the fish body to be completely round, so we tried to use sweep and loft, but couldn’t figure out a way to make the features extend to the other parts of the fish, like the fins. We ended up extruding the different sections of the sketch out to different lengths, and just filleted the body to give it some curve. For the pink bigger fish, we also had to use sweep to do the mouth section. Once we finished the CAD, we had to learn how to use the 3D printers. We went to Bray and got trained on the printers there. We learned how to upload the files to Prusa, position them, add supports, and upload them to the printers. Then we just had to wait for them to print and break off the supports.

Sheet Metal Fish:

Sand-Casted Fish: 

Acrylic Fish: 

This was my portion. When making the laser-cut fish we wanted to have two different sizes, so I created two separate CAD designs to use in this project. I made the designs in Solidworks as drawings on the front plane. I utilized the “Mirror Entities” function to make the fish bodies symmetrical about the x-axis and then individually drew on the find and little hole at the top through which to thread the string by which they would be held. Then, to create the fish I looked for acrylic scraps in Bray, but it was difficult to find scraps that would fit the pieces. I ended up finding sheets of 6mm and 3mm acrylic. At first, I didn’t know what settings to use on the laser cutter, so one size of the fish was only etched and I had to redo that set, which ended up cutting all the way through.  

Metal Hoops:

 

Once all of the individual fish were made, as well as the hoops to hold them, we were able to come back together and assemble the entire structure altogether. Through a combination of string, yard, and cord, the fish were attached at various distances from the rings. About a third of the fish were attached in a group around 3 ft down on the inner ring. The rest of the fish were hung at small intervals of varying heights on the outer ring to create a swirl. The goal of this design was to create the illusion of the fish swimming up towards the surface. The rings themselves were connected via yarn to each other and to a sand-casted fish center point that can be hung on a hook. 

Reflection:

If we had another chance to make the sculpture, we would like to use SolidWorks features or our knowledge of static mechanics to find out how long to make each of the strings holding up the fish which would in turn help us balance the weights of each fish more effectively. Additionally, we originally imagined a larger size for the sculpture, but had to scale it down due to the materials to which we had access and the limited amount of time we had. Our skills and knowledge would be sufficient to create a larger version of our project, but we would require some more time and a different CAD approach.