MAT 238: Press Fitted Kit

For this assignment, we were tasked with creating a press fitted kit.

In order to gain inspiration for my kit, I browsed various objects around my room and found an interesting white board magnet. To build the first component of my kit, I took a few measurements of the magnet and created my own version in Rhino. To replicate it, I created a set of circular curves that started with a large radius, narrowed to a smaller one, then into a medium sized one. Once this surface was lofted, I capped it to create a geometry, offset a sphere along the z-axis, and unionized it with this geometry.

After I created a connecting geometry, I then created a test object to insert the connector into. As a test, I created a cube that I then performed a BooleanDifference using two spheres that protruded from the faces of the cube. I made these spheres slightly bigger than the connector spheres so they could have some flexibility within the insertions. Luckily, the connections fit perfectly on the first print.

Once I knew the dimensions for fitting my connector object, I created a more interesting one by creating a curve and using the Revolve function. Once I found an object that could be a good connector object, I experimented with the FilletEdge function to create a neat object. After creating the base connector object, I performed a BooleanDifference to create sphere insertions on the top and bottom of the connector object. I baked and printed this object in order to double check if the connection object fit properly.

After creating an object that was able to take in two connections, I then decided to create an object that was able to take in many connections. To do this, I simply Extruded a circular curve to the height of the previous two input connector. Once this was set, I created a Polygonal prism that is able to take in a variable amount of sides to determine how many connection the connector can have. To create inserts similar to the two-input connector, I created a Python script to find the midpoint between points on the curve of the polygon. My script then found the Unit Vector between the origin and this point, and moved the center points of the spheres along these vectors in order to create a proper spherical insert.

To complete my kit, I wanted to create a double sided connector. To do this, I took my existing connector and performed a BooleanDifference between its base and a peg. Then, I created a longer peg that could be placed between two connector bases (with a slightly smaller radius). Using this double sided peg, I could then connect the multiple input connector, two-input connector, and connection objects.