making a solar oven
fab academy micro challenge #1
This first challenge was “Design and make something that can help the process of designing/creating/thinking with others” and we had to use knowledge and skills from the previous classes : Git/HTML, CAD and CAM.
I worked in pairs with Gerda and as we had already started thinking about creating a community around low techs and “slow life” in general, we wanted to continue in that direction with the challenge.
We planned to make :
- a website to share our experiments at the “Slow Lab” (this is the name we gave to the collective!) and allow experience sharing with others via a chat platform
- and one low-tech appliance. We had a few objects in mind but for the challenge we thought we would go for the solar oven as it would give us the occasion to work both with the laser cutter and the vinyl cutter for the reflective panels.
We started the website which is not ready yet but we focused more on the object during the challenge. The inspiration, design and fabrication processes are all documented in this git repository together with the files that we designed.
As described in the git documentation, we designed 2 objects : the solar panels part and the outside box to contain it.
I was in charge of the outside box and I stuggled quite a lot with the kerf and finger joints of this press-fit box! I think I asked for help to everyone in the fablab team! Josep helped me readjusting my Fusion 360 desig and we spent a lot of time with Dafni to cut different tests and I reajusted the kerf value at least 4 times before it was press-fit! But I feel much more comfortable now with Fusion and with the laser cutting machine.
The next step is the process of testing, we are starting this week and we will share the results in this git repository too and improve the design if needed!