Final Lightsaber Papercraft -Progress-

    

    This project has gone through a lot of trial and error. And unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish on time. But, I will be showing everything I have done for the past couple weeks, and walk through my thought process. 

    Before the progress critique, and after I had posted my last blog post, I decided to make a second prototype- this time adding every element I had in mind to the lightsaber. 

    Unfortunately, my second prototype of my completed lightsaber was left behind, so I do not have any photos of it at the moment. (This was the cyan coloured lightsaber shown during the progress critique) I will be adding these photos on a later date. 

    To break down the gist of the second prototype, the lightsaber was too big (I wanted it to be a comfortable size when holding) and also consisted of a lot of structural flaws including a very wobbly top due to both stacking of paper and use of liquid super glue, and large gaps that shown through the paper due to poor cutting and tab placement.

  

  I went back to Rhino and tried combining multiple stacked hexagon forms together and adding a whole ton of tabs- which would allow the use of multiple shapes folding up into one shape instead of having them stacked one on top of each other. This was also my first time trying out the laser cutter, which saved a lot of time from cutting. But this method came with issues. 

  The first thing I noticed was the difficulty of gluing the tiny tabs together. It didn't help that the object itself was closed off by an "end" piece. I also noticed a lack of tabs between the groups of three/twos within the folds. I had tried to combat this by using scrap pieces of paper to connect the pieces together. But it ultimately gave the folded finished product a messy look and didn't hold itself together well. 

    

    This led to gaps exposing themselves- especially where I forgot to add tabs to the bottom to connect with the large hexagon surface. At this point I was getting a bit annoyed and had to ask Bryan of what he thought. After getting some advice, I went back to Rhino and redesigned some of the parts again.

    

   

Some more test prints I ended up printing:

    Although this test run was rough, it wasn't all disappointing. In the process I was able to create the very bottom of my Lightsaber, and some of the more smaller details such as buttons.

    

The image right above has some extra grey flat hexagons behind it because I was bit stupid and forgot that I was printing with different coloured card stock paper. So those grey hexagons are actually supposed to be black, and then layered on top of the folded hexagon form.

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 The next attempt was to create more opened areas within the structure to make gluing easier and having an overall sturdier form. I then went back to laser cut the bottom half of my lightsaber- mostly because the forms were a bit easier to sort out and combine together.

This worked out a whole lot better, and I was actually happy with the results. The only downside being I have to go into Rhino and change a lot from the original fold design. 

I still think the lightsaber is a bit too big, but at this point I just need to roll with what I already have. The images underneath are small details for the bottom of the lightsaber structure.

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Unfortunately, this testing round digital Rhino files are the ones I am missing on my One Drive. I do however, have some screenshots of the handle I created so I will instead share this in the meantime.

The image above shows my first prototype of the handle and the grip. I disliked both of the methods I tried, and decided to try unraveling the handle as a whole instead of individual pieces. It took me a bit to figure out the best way to unravel the handle, but I finally settled on the bottom design and got printing.

After gluing the first grip piece on, I realized I would need to evenly space the pieces better, and also include a plain surface to stick all the of the pieces on easier. But overall, I was quite content with how it looked.

After all of the problems I had run into, I believe I would change a lot if I were to do this again. The most important and probably the most simple would be to jot down everything that I wanted to try and wanted to change within the design. I would often go print or laser cut my design and then go back a day later after realizing I forgot to add tabs, or that I forgot I needed to change a crucial structural element in the design. 

   I also feel as though I was too stuck on this idea that this project needed to be perfect, which made me hesitant on trying different techniques and ideas. Now that I am also more confident with unraveling 3D models, the process would definitely be a lot quicker and would have saved me a lot of time for remodeling.

Even though this piece isn't finished yet, I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out and will continue to work on it now that I have a solid plan of what I need to change and print. 

It should be completed after the weekend (March 26).