FINISHED!!!!!

My work is all finished and handed in. I have valued this project as both a learning experience about modelmaking and how to research a project. I am looking to starting the next project after christmas.

Skills which I need to work on for the future include the use of dichloromethane with clear acrylic!!!!

In the final few days of the assembly we glued the pressure caps to their stalks, the original 2mm hole within the 3 mm rod didnt work due to tolerance issues with the 2mm rod. To overcome this we cut the stalk in half hrough the hole for a good bond between the tensile rod and the stalks.

The etching of the backboard was a success, we used two paper mock ups to test if we had everything in the right position and that we had omitted the correct lines from the drawing so there was cvontinuity with the model.

Alan did a couple of test sprays to decide which colour we needed to backspray the backboard. We chose a dark greay rather than a black. He achieved a good result with the spraying.

During the spraying process on the final day we think the spray room was too cold which was leading to the paint cracking on our concrete sections. Unfortunately the only solution was to strip back the concrete pillars and repaint them, In hindsight the painting should have been done much earlier on in the process to allow for any unforseen mistakes with the spraying process.

Another problem we had were dichloromethane burns on the acrylic glazing. This occurred when we glued the 1mm diameter acrylic rod to the edge of the glazing to mimic the mastic seal used on the actual structure.This was purely down to the timescale towards the deadline, however we should have built a jig to hold the acrylic and not fingers.

As the cnc components didnt work out right, I opted to cut them on the laser cutter instead. The thicker material would ensure they were visible without too much inspection and the form, shape and the role they played on the building was clear. As they were in two halves I had to assemble them also.



In hindsight all the parts for the tensile system should have been made in white acrylic. This would have meant that they would have required no painting and would have not left paint marks on the glazing of which there are a few small ones.

Once the model was up on its backboard my own personal opinion was that it lacked a context, I asked my team mates about lkaser etching the rest of the building onto the backboard to set off the rest of the model.



This was taken onboard so I emailed Catherine Smith of Wilkinson Eyre to ask her for the drawing. She sent it through, unfortunately none of the tensile system on the drawing was shown at the thickness we had built it. We had to increase the size of the tensile components to allow for continuiity with our model.



Above you can see the drawing of the etching for the backboard. Using this mock up allowed us to make minute adjustments depending on where our model was hittting the backboard.

For the glueing of the tensile plates to the beams we opted to use Superglue as it will bond platic to chemiwood instantly. Tom completed this exercise. We decided that for the tensile rods we would use 2mm plexiglas rod, over this slides another rod which the glazing compression plates are fixed to which we chose 3mm plexi glass rod for. We decided that to achieve the detail then we would have to drill 2mm holes into the 3mm rod. After Toms many failed attempts with a rotary tool, I opted to try myself using a pin vice. I used the jig that Tom had made to mark on the rod where the hole was needed. I then drilled through with a 0.5mm drill bit, followed by a 1.5mm drill bit and then finishing off with a 2mm drill bit. I was finding that drilling by hand was allowing me the control and precision to get the holes exactly central (with 0.5mm each side), the plexiglas wasnt melting like it did with the heat generated by the rotary tool. Although many of the rods were snapping with the last few turns of the pin vice. I was producing 1 unbroken rod to 4 breakages. I decided to swap the drill bit that Tom had picked. This proved to be the problem, the drill bit was blunt, I was hardly getting any breakages now.

After discussions between myself and Tom we opted to make the glazing panes from Acrylic. This offered the rigidity that we required instead of other less favourable materials. Although we did opt to use 2mm thick acrylic, if we were to make the glazing closer to the scale size then it would habe to have been much thinner. In light of this we decided that 2mm thich would be fine and not overdominate the rest of the model. I cut them using the circular saw. As the edges where the glazing meets would touch, paul suggested put some 1mm diameter acrylic rod in the joints to hide any dviations, This worked really well but was very difficult to attach to the model with just my fingers. This was proven by the dichloromethane liquid whe it doesnt touch the house.

For the glazing pressure caps we have decided to use the CNC machine due to their complexity based on their size. Tom has drawn the Rhino drawing and left me to manufacture them on the CNC machine as he has decided that a film students project is more important than our own! VERY FRUSTRATING!!! I have decided to manufacture the caps from ABS Plastic as the machining qualities are very good. After 2 days writing the programs for the cnc machine, we have opted not to take it further forward due to their size and the amount of finishing required. Instead I chose to laser cut them from 1mm thick acrlic and stick the square and cross together.

Due to the intricate nature of the plates and tensile structure we opted to laser cut the parts from 1mm thick acrylic, this would ensure that we got exact copies of each component and would be easier than cutting them by hand at this size. At a scale of 1:20 this scaled up perfectly to the 20mm thick plate drawn on the architects drawings. As the data was taken from our CAD drawing I used this as the data for the illustrator file for the laser cutting. I had to place a piece of acrylic under the sheet material as a sacrificial piece so that we didnt lose all the tiny pieces I had cut out. Fur the assembly I used the 1:1 drawing I had produced of the model to ensure that I was glueing the parts together at the correct angles for the correct locations on the building.

The model is beginning to take shape now with some of the key components coming together. The rocks in my opinion were taking far too long to produce, at this point they still weren't finished. The rock sculpting process which Alan is working on his own, has lasted the entire length of the project. His decision to make them from Blue foam may have proved costly for time as the foam requires protecting against fillers and paints. He has yet to contribute to any of the architectural elements.