21 February, 2008

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding"

I had the opportunity to take Silance's product design class two semesters ago, and our final project was to create a chair using the CNC router. The only guidelines for the chair were it had to be able to fit into the bed of the router and be made out of plywood.

This class was interesting because it made use of two of the three forms of digital fabrication technology available at Clemson, study models were cut out of the laser cutter and half and full scale models were cut out of the CNC router.

The reason I am posting about this is because I thought it would be interesting to show some of the technology at Clemson that everyone might not know too much about. I know Professor Hecker has talked about the router in class but, a full scale example might help to explain what he was talking about.

This was my chair design from the Spring of '07. I wanted to create a chair that had three distinct profiles and could be twisted and turned to create a different sitting experience from all angles. If you look closely you can see the plywood profiles that were cut out on the router and fastened together to create the width of the chair. I added some fabric over the joints to make them slightly more aesthetically pleasing. This chair is still sitting up in studio back in Clemson, I am trying to see if it can make it all the way through to my graduation before I take it home.

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