For my final project I worked with two other students in my class to make a chandelier. We came up with this idea by browsing through the internet looking through recycled projects done by other people. We saw a chandelier made of coke bottles and we decided we wanted to do something similar to this, but at the same time we wanted to make it our own. We also knew we had to use the machines in the innovation center. So our idea was to use the innovation center to engrave the bottles and the 3-D printers to print the base. We also found a design online to use can tabs to make chains so we would use those to support the chandelier. Our inspiration is below.
Bottles
Luckily our project had three parts and three people in our group, so we each focused on one part. My part was engraving the bottles. I started by experimenting with different sized bottles and different designs to see what would look best. I decided that small beer bottles would work best because of the open area to engrave on in and they were small enough that they would still look nice. I got 6 from my sister, cleaned them out then brought them in.
Next I had to create the design I wanted it to be simple but still look nice. I also knew I wanted it to go around the entire bottle. I decided to diagonal lines that surround the bottle so I went into illustrator and made it, to the dimensions of the bottle, which I found online.
Finally I had to print the bottles with the laser, being the first student at Waunakee to engrave a bottle. It went well and I repeated the process 6 times total. The laser had to be in rotary mode and I also had to know the radius of the bottle when I printed it.
Base
This was Cody's portion of the project. I didn't do much to actually make it in Inventor but I did have some insight on the design process. Cody did a really nice job with the project, luckily he has a lot of experience with Inventor.
Failed print.
Successful print.
Unluckily the 3-D printers did not want to cooperate with us. Most of the prints didn't go correctly in some way. Some of them bent and some just stopped printing half way through. This was the greatest struggle with the project and is the only reason it didn't end up the way we hoped.
Chain
This was Brandon's part of the project. He found the idea online with video tutorials how to do it. So me and him brought in a bunch of can tabs and put together the chains
We would have one person cut the tabs and one attach them to the others. Each link was made by five tabs cut then bent together. We spent hours doing this and I am very satisfied with the result. We made 3 chains each 26 links long, and they look very nice.
Summary
To put the project together I had to sand the pieces a lot so they would actually fit together. Then I super-glued the bottles on the sides and added the chain. I waited for it to dry and picked it up to see if it would stay together, and it did.
Even though the project didn't end up perfect we did the best we could the machines just wouldn't cooperate. We would have liked to use alternating colors and a few of the pieces were bowed. I also felt pretty special being the first to engrave a bottle that wasn't required.