Lids going on Forever

Now I’ve decided that I’m going to make different shaped boxes I thought I would get the lid designs done and see how my other designs transferred. After spending a few hours playing around with the round designs being transferred into this new shape.

Gaudi House

Brighton Pavillion

Strasbourg Cathedral

St Basil Cathedral

Windows

Ottoman Architecture

Seeing them all tiled like this is a really interesting way of me seeing the boxes I’m going to be creating next. I enjoyed taking the same elements from the original box designs and ending up with these really different box lids. Seeing these new designs like this is pushing me to want to make my next lot of boxes as soon as I can, and see how they turn out.

Living Hinges

I didn’t want to just spend the time looking at the living hinges in the hope I was getting the distances and the thickness right so i started researching living hinges, this made me come across this blog.

https://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/blog/category/def-proc/lattice-hinges/

The blog posts about the lattice hinge as they call them were really interesting a lot of the information went straight over my head, but after reading it 3 or 4 times it started to make a little sense. I still didn’t fully get what it was talking about especially with all the equations to figure out little things for the hinge. After a long phone call to my brother who did computer science at university he put the calculations into a excel spreadsheet so i could just input the data to then get what i needed to be able to make my hinges.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BE76EE0C3FA56A87!2146&authkey=!ANh1qnQ-4A6eRPY&ithint=file%2cxlsx

This is the link to the excel spreadsheet that my brother created. since he created it i added a few more bits in and I’m pretty sure that they ant completely right but the information i needed is there and simplified for me to be able to create my hinges.

After looking back at the blog with this spread sheet it makes a lot more sense to what my brother was talking about on the phone when he was trying to explain it all to be.

Designing

After thinking about a different shaped box I thought i should do at least one design and see how it transfers into a different shape for the other lids.
After spending time playing around with the different shape and seeing how the design transfers this has made me really interested in transferring my 6 lid designs into this shape lid and seeing which ones will transfer ok and which ones won’t transfer to this shape.

Living Hinge in Flexi Ply

After my card test i wanted to just see about making a simple living hinge. For this i just used a band saw just to see how close i could get the parts.

i initially tried having a cm between the cuts in the ply

This created a simple bend it reached 90 degrees but didn’t go much further without hearing some of the layers in the ply starting to break. This showed me that the cuts need to be closer together at the edges.

from this i then tested a few different ones some with holes at the ends to see if that would help the flexibility then again with a zigzag path for the corner.

Having the cuts 5mm apart meant that the corner was a lot more flexible and would easily bend over on to itself. these i would still be a little worried that it could break because its such a simple design i would be worried it wouldn’t hold strong enough for the box.

After those tests i thought that going for a slightly harder design, this wasn’t one that i saw online i was just testing to see how this would work. using a dremel to get the elements on the inside. this one flexed to be 90 degrees again roughly but soon after it snapped this is a point in the testing that i needed because i can now see how this could work and the way that it might not work.

After looking at the thicknesses i wanted to have a go at making it shape around a box using the measurements of the ply and the base having a corner radius of 40 mm.

This for a first attempt turned out well i wanted to just see how it would go around the corner. it goes around the corner fine but there was a slight issue with getting the rest of the ply to sit flush against the base. either the base needs to be bigger or the sides need to be smaller.

Living Hinge Tests

After having my problems with the thickness of the ply. I decided that making living hinges would be easy and thought that I could easily figure it out of how to make living hinges using different shapes that would be dependent on the lid designs.

I initially just had a play with some 3mm card I did a very simple living hinge design for the sides. this was an interesting thing to initially try to see how the basic one moves and the flexibility. from his i wanted to try to see how different shapes worked and how they could develop and make a feature of the hinges. this would then mean i would just veneer one side and cut or CNC it with the veneer on.

Once I tested out the simple version I thought to have a play with a shape from my Gaudis house design this design actually bent really easily. the card didn’t start to snap which was really surprising since i just set it out like the original living hinge.

This is easy to work with especially since the material I’m going to be using with it is flexible to start with.

Flexible but not Flexible Enough

For the past boxes I’ve made I’ve been using 3mm flexible ply, this is flexible enough that it will go around my smallest form of 150mm but after running out of 3mm i ordered more from P&P timbers the university suppliers. On the phone when i talked to someone they said that they could get 3mm ply for me but it would just take a couple more days. Once ordered and delivered turns out they delivered 5mm ply. I had to play around with the ply and how flexible it would be but it wasn’t flexible enough to even go around my biggest form of 300mm.

I then had a panic that I wouldn’t be able to make any more boxes other then the set I already have formed, after panicking for a while I had a think about different boxes I looked at and the shapes and other ways I can use the ply. I decided that I could use the 5mm to create boxes using a living hinge.

Lids Lids and more Lids

After spending months doing lots of different lid designs I’ve decided on my final 6.

Windows from different places

St Basil Cathedral

Brighton Pavilion

Gaudi’s house

Strasbourg Cathedral

Ottoman Architecture

These i think are the nicer designs out of the ones I’ve done all from different parts of the world. These have all really peaked my interest and if i have time after I’ve finished my boxes i would like to make more of these but as one offs on particular buildings and elements.

One Sheet 2

 After figuring out how much veneer i need i needed to figure out how many boxes i can make out of a 8ft x 4ft sheet of long grain flexi ply.

From one sheet i can make 2 full sets of boxes then some smaller sets. for this i will need some more veneer if i was to create all these sets. i also think to get my pieces done in time i might need to make another set of my forms.

i have ordered 2 sheets of flexi ply so i will need another 3-4 sheets of veneer to get a few full sets made.

One Sheet

After drawing out a 8ft by 4ft rectangle i needed to see how much more veneer i needed to get. i found that i actually only need one more sheet of veneer.

By drawing out all the inside and outside elements that I’m veneering I can see just how much veneer i need for a full set of 4 boxes. From this i can see how to effectively use my veneer. although i need to perfect my cutting to get the elements cut out to the correct size, this could be done on the CNC machine with the pull knife on the machine to get them all the right size and perfectly have them all ready to glue straight on to the forms.

Exhibition plan

After this mornings group crits and the feedback i received i decided to change the way i was to be displaying my work in the Final exhibition i still want people to be able to walk around my work to see it from all angles so i think the separate lids might be laying down rather then standing up but we will see how it looks when I’ve got the lids made.

Now instead of just having 3 sets of stacked boxes I’m going to do one set that are stacked, one set without any lids that go into each other then a couple of my other boxes i created around the front. Then around the outside I’m going to have two different sets of my decorative lids.

These could also be displayed on a shelf but then i would need a wall for my display and I’m not sure if i want a wall. i want people to be able to walk around them and see them in full 360 seeing every element that has gone into the making and the decoration.

I want the plinths to be all different heights replicating the stacked boxes. getting taller at the back but i don’t know how feesable that will be because other people will need plinths too.

For the exhibition I want to have my central display with the other things far enough away that people can walk around and through them to see all of it. This would mean i would need to do something about the standing lids by either laying them down or making them look as nice on the inside as the outside. I think this will take up a lot more space then originally planned but i think that it would looks nice like this and people can walk between the pieces and explore the full detail of he work.