My friend Valerie started a Master’s program in publishing at NYU this fall, and needed a concept for a book to make in a marketing class she’s taking. Thinking about the current financial crisis and various worries that people seem to have about the entire economic system failing, we threw together a concept for a guide to stages of financial, governmental, and societal collapse.
Here is the PCB, fresh from Advanced Circuits. I threw it together and mocked it up with the battery from sparkfun for size. It looks like it’ll be fine. For scale, I measured it against my thumb. It’s a little thicker than I’d like, as I’m thinking about casting a resin box for it (probably not in time for the thesis presentation, more likely for the show), and the size may make it kind of unwieldy for a pocket. Otherwise I’m pretty happy with it.
The last couple days I’ve been doing some writing of the thesis paper. Tomorrow, I debug the xbee circuits with the new PCB controlling them, and hopefully plan out how I am going to build the insecurity prosthesis that has me kind of stymied at the moment. Triage time!
Also, this is a really nice review of the new Iron Man movie, talking about a lot of the same stuff that I’m working through as I write. Zeitgeist?
the last couple of days I have been working really hard to try to finish the anxiety prosthesis in time for my presentation in class today. Here’s link dump of my progress. Generally, I put it all together, moving from sewing the two pieces together to screwing them together, adding grommets to route the bunches of thread that will control the hackles into, replacing the pulleys with very tall eyelets, and making eyelets that will route the thread over the shoulders into the grommet holes. Overall, it’s been pretty successful, but needs some fine tuning to have it work well while being worn. I like the action and motion a lot though. Video is coming.
Bonus shot of me testing the fit in the bathroom.
finished the sewing up of the boxes. took some glamour shots. The next step is to make a pocket-sized controller for the xbee and then it’s done! whew!
(besides calibrating and testing the lighting and stuff like that, but i want to have my little victories)
I went to blick art after thesis class today and got some sculpting mesh and some plaster bandages. The plaster is for reattaching the shoulder pieces to the back cast. With the mesh, I sketched out a general shape for the insecurity prosthesis. I wrapped it in some fabric that I saw Rory leave on the junk shelf yesterday. After pinning the fabric around the mesh armature, I pinned the heating pad to the underside.
It goes around the neck and shoulders and hangs down onto the chest. It works pretty well, gets nicely warm (even if not very heavy) and hasn’t caught on fire yet, which is a kind of success. Drew Burrows, Kyveli Vezani, Robert Moon, and Rory Nugent were kind enough to model it for me.
I think that what I’m going to have to do is to make a pattern from this shape, and then cast and cut the pattern out of silicone, eventually sewing it together with the ubiquitous red thread. I need to think of something that could fill it that wouldn’t cause a fire or electrocution hazard. Aesthetically, I’d love for it to be really well sealed and to be filled with water, but that would be pretty dangerous with an AC heater involved. Maybe rice or lentils, but that seems to subvert the medical angle. small glass or plastic beads? that seems like it’s getting expensive. Stuff to think about, I guess.
After yesterday’s kind of ridiculous etching failure, I’ve moved into building out the circuits for the final revision of the alienation prosthesis. Two arduino/xbee circuit boards are built into a single perfboard. Eventually I’ll split them on the bandsaw. Below are some shots of them in progress (and untested).
Later tonight, I’m going to sit down and try to get down an early draft of my introduction and prior art to contextualize my work. I think it’ll be pretty fun.
Today I gave etching my board a shot. I figured that it wouldn’t be easy, as the board is really tight, and in order to have all of the traces on a single side, Eagle, the PCB schematic and layout software, required the traces to be very thin. It was tough, but at least I wouldn’t have to try to match up both sides of the copper clad with designs to be etched.
Even after tinning the board and jumping across etching mistakes, the board is almost unusable. I’ll probably go to a perfboard solution tomorrow.
I tried to use a new etchant, cupric chloride, that allegedly would get stronger as copper would dissolve into it. It didn’t seem to etch all that well, until I made a new batch (one part hydrochloric acid to two parts hydrogen peroxide). That really ate away at the copper, but seemed to wear out as it turned green from copper in solution. It’s really photogenic though (and does weird stuff to color levels).
Today I was gratified to find that removing the plaster cast from the mannequin was easier than I had anticipated. Well, not exactly easy, but after a particularly tough time in the lower stomach area it got better. I recommend a dremel, an exacto knife, and patience. The pieces were a little fragile, and I made some more plaster to reinforce them with. When the plaster dries completely, I’ll sand the insides smooth and make it into a mold.
Tom Gerhardt had a nice warming mat that I can use to at least prototype the heating element on the insecurity prosthesis. If it works well, it could easily be a part of the final object. It plugs into the wall and just runs AC, with a four-state switch that seems to be OFF, LOW, MED, and HIGH.
Today I added the second and third layer of plaster bandages for the mold I’m building around the mannequn. Later today or tomorrow, I’ll sand it down and think about building a jig for a more complete mold. A couple of people have said that, in their opinion, molding/casting would be easier or better If I just did it on the mannequin. I’ll have to think about it–it could save me some time. It would make the mold bigger, and possibly harder to deal with.
