3/23 - 3/27

Last week, I started researching a project for after the word clock. I have this canvas painting in my room that is just using the wall in order to stand up. I wanted to make it look nicer, so I had the idea of creating a decorative easel to hold the canvas. I started by looking online for images and examples of wooden easels. I also sketched out my easel in my notebook and started designing it in Fusion.

Kim actually suggested a different design that might be easier, so I might just scratch this whole design and restart.

This week, I was working on the easel and figuring out the final components of the word clock. I was trying to create a design in Fusion for my easel. It was becoming really difficult for me and I had to start over a few times, trying out different approaches. Mr. Christy also had an idea for distributing power throughout the word clock, so he started telling us about it. He suggested we run two long, thin pieces of steel along the inside of the word clock and connect the LED wires to them.

I created a quick little sketch of the steel bars so that I could get everything organized and I was sure on how many holes I would need and what it roughly would look like.

I have to cut the pieces a little bit shorter and add a bunch of holes for each row of LEDs, at least four spacers so that they can sit above the brackets, and holes for power and ground. However, before I could do that, Mr. Christy told me to design it in CAD first, so I spent a little time doing that and then started talking to Mr.L. I wanted to ask him about what I would be able to use to connect the steel bars to the word clock. He found some nylon spacers and wood screws for me to use.

We were also able to get the carpentry teacher to come down and look at our word clock and figure out some ideas for hanging it up. We told him about our(Mr. L's) french cleat idea, so he took our backplate piece back to carpentry and made us another piece of wood that we could use as the other half of the french cleat. He said they would bolt that piece into the wall and then we should move the backplate up a little bit and add a few more screws to those brackets and that should be enough to hold up the clock. We might also ask metal fab, depending on how the french cleat idea turns out. By the end of the day Thursday,I got the steel bars marked on where to cut and then once I cut them shorter, I'll bring them to the word clock to mark up where all the holes should be.