This was our second week in the Champaign Urbana Community Fab Lab. This week instead of working with electronics, I was a part of the team that prepared the other parts of the watch such as the shell and the wristband.
We used a programming software, called Inkscape, to design our watch. I previously used Inkscape to do a lot of laser cutting with acrylic so I knew my way around the workshop pretty well. Inkscape allows users to create 2D designs, these designs can be used for anything, but they are most popularly used to laser cut. The pieces of our watch we’re already designed but we had the option to add engravings on the pieces. In Inkscape, if you specify a stroke line to be .10 then the laser cutter will cut through the material but any other number the laser cutter will simply etch the design in the material. This feature is nice because it allows us to add designs that we may not want to cut out. The breadboard that we are using with the tilt sensors will sit in between two of the pieces of the watch and another circle will sit on top with the design that we create.
We also used sewing machines this week. I learned how to sew at a young age, but it has been a while since I’ve sewn, so sewing this week was very relaxing and brought back a lot of memories. We used the sewing machines to sew a wristband for our watch. We started off with a workshop in which we had to follow and sew lines that were marked on a piece of fabric. After that we went throughout the process of picking out fabric, tracing our design on the material and cutting the design out. After that, it is common practice to iron a piece of fabric that is being folded so that it is possible to work with a flatter surface. Therefore, we folded the fabric so that the good sides were touching, we ironed the fold flat and then we sewed a seam along the edge. After we sewn the seam, we had to turn the band right side out, and then we sewed Velcro on the band. The Velcro is so that the band can be adjustable for all wrist sizes.
At the end of class, we also had to present to MileStone labs. My team got good feedback regarding how we can alter our project. I am really enjoying the hands-on aspect of this class. When I was researching this class, I was drawn towards the fact that it was different from other classes that I’ve traditionally taken at this school. I learn better by being hands-on, so it was fun to experiment with some of the software and machines in the fab lab.
333 Replies to “Wrapping up the watch project”