Tutorial series: Design for manufacturing
What you'll learn
Manufacturing the shade leaf of the lamp shade will take two different tools. Learn how to make the first one, a positive mold where the plastic gets molded to the outside of it, directly editing the part, extruding, and subtracting the shade leaf to create the part.
Transcript
00:00
Next part we're going to take a look at is building the tool and die for vacuum forming the shade leaf. And we're just going to focus on one of them because the process is identical for all three different leaves. So they're they're slightly different in that the the diameter of the ball is different. So you'd have to make different tools for each one. But we're just going to focus on this one right here. The first thing that we're going to do is turn on our.
00:29
mid plane that we built early on. And that plane is going to help us bisect this part. And we're gonna, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna make a copy of it and we're gonna split it. Again, move it down five.
00:46
And then we're going to move that one back to its location.
00:54
And I'm going to hide the original so we can start working on editing this new component.
01:05
We're going to make two parts here. The first one is to vacuum form this component. And so we're going to make a positive mold where the plastic gets vacuumed to the outside of it. And then we're going to make another tool to help us trim that vacuum form part. So we're going to start off by just taking this single part here and we're going to thicken it in order to start helping us make the
01:34
vacuum form tool. And we're just going to directly edit this component.
01:43
So I'm going to delete some of these extra pieces that we don't really need in order to vacuum form the main part.
01:52
These extra features here are going to be trimmed away after the fact, but in order to make our tooling for the vacuum form, we're just going to need to have a solid body that we can vacuum plastic to.
02:18
So all these extra features, we're just going to come through and delete them. And I am going to try to close this up. And I'm just going to give ourselves a little bit of extra material on this mold so that when the plastic is formed around this part, we have a little bit of extra room to trim away the extra material that we don't need. So we're going to add five millimeters there.
02:44
Additionally, this mold is going to sit on a platen on this surface. And so that we don't have to deal with the curvature of the plastic as it bends from this surface to the platen surface. I'm also going to extend this bottom surface another five millimeters as well. So using our. New part here, we need to trim away this top surface so that it matches up correctly with our shade leaf.
03:11
So I'm going to turn on the shade leaf and we can see that it matches perfectly with that top surface. I'm going to do a Boolean subtraction between these two pieces so that the top surface of this mold matches the inner surface of the shade leaf. So I'm going to select both parts. I'm going to do a subtract and I'm going to make sure that we're going to keep our
03:39
mold and I'm going to subtract our shade leaf. And I also want to make sure that I am keeping the original of the removed body. So that should be good right there. And if I subtract, what I'm left with is those two pieces fitting together. I'm going to hide our shade leaf. And this is now our tool to help us make that surface. And you'll see that we have some extra material here from the
04:09
from the subtraction. So I'm just going to reduce this surface that extra one millimeter so that our surfaces match up correctly. And we don't need this middle boss here. So I'm also going to delete that. So if I zoom back out, and I show the shade leaf that we use again, you'll see that it sits nicely on top. And I could even do a cross section here to
04:43
everything fits together nicely. And so if I look at the cross section here of these parts, everything's matching up. So at this point, our tool for vacuum forming is complete. And what we need to focus on is then how do we trim that part to the correct size? You know, get out of our section view. And I'm going to now hide our tool, which is complete. We're going to
05:12
just hide that out of the way. I'm gonna make another copy of this part here because I'm going to cut this in half now in order to be able to use the cross section to help us make the second tool.
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About the instructor
Andrew Camardella is an Industrial Design Consultant and Faculty member at DePaul University, with a diverse background stemming from his passion for creation, tinkering, hacking, and experimentation. His expertise in the product development process and proficiency with various digital tools enable him to seamlessly translate concepts, 3D models, prototypes, and products between physical and digital realms, enabling clients to address user needs and tackle complex design and manufacturing challenges. His extensive design and fabrication experience spans multiple industries, including consumer and commercial products, large-scale art, digital imaging, packaging, environment design, green design, and instructional content development for a wide range of clients including tech startups, consumer goods companies, artists, and inventors.