General Modeling Projects
Background
Some modeling projects fulfil a purpose, such as my lathe or bandsaw assemblies. I can use the models that I produce as blueprints for the real-world versions of those projects, and easily keep track of measurements, as well as design and problem-solve before I begin purchasing materials and assembling them together. Other modeling projects I just do for fun, to aid in understanding a mechanical concept, or to better my skills with the modeling application.
A few such projects include a sword that I modeled based on one used in a show, which I tried to replicate as accurately as possible from images extracted from the show in order to provide a model for anyone wishing to construct the sword in the real world. One day I may attempt to make it from steel sections, but I currently don’t have the tools available that I would need to produce a satisfactory product, so it will be a few years before I can begin that kind of hobby project. Similarly, a character in another show that I once watched wears a pair of goggles that I particularly like, which are capable of shining light through the lenses themselves, thus illuminating whatever they’re pointed at. I appreciated that concept and wanted to make a base model upon which I could possibly one day design such a light-emitting system, so I drew up an aesthetic representation of the goggles in Creo Parametric.
One of the projects assigned in my heat transfer engineering class required students to design a heatsink that would fit within a certain size envelope and could remove heat from a system at a certain rate from some theoretical heat-generating location. Part of the project involved modeling the heatsink using the design parameters chosen by the student. At the time that the project was assigned, forming that kind of simple static model was easy work for me, since I had just gotten the hang of using Creo Parametric’s basic tools in my design for manufacturing class during the prior semester.
When I went home for the summer of 2017, I worked on a project with my dad involving the transformation of the stump of a large dead elm tree in our yard into a table. Using some measurements that I took once we were able to separate and flip the stump over, I was able to quickly throw together a model of our desired chair shape for the table’s four chairs in Creo, which we then used to mark out the border lines on the surface of the stump to direct the chainsaw while cutting. That same year, my college friend, who liked to grind and brew his own coffee quite often, found that the handle on his coffee-bean grinder was extremely wobbly. He gave me the dimensions of the handle's rotating shaft and a reference wall inside of the chamber and after we looked up the official fix for the wobbliness given by the grinder's manufacturer, as well as parts made by other coffee enthusiasts, I modeled a stabilizer to keep the shaft spinning smoothly. He then had the model 3D-printed through the university's engineering machine shop and has been able to use the grinder properly, all due to a simple five-minute design.
Lastly, simply for the fun of it, and probably to eventually 3D print from a castable wax resin, I modeled a small cartoon style drill tip based on, once again, an item from a show. Back when I had just begin using Creo Parametric, I was easily entertained by modeling interesting objects using the new tools that I’d discovered and testing their limits to expose their weaknesses and force me to find new solutions to increase my modeling capacity. I enjoy spending time moving an idea from my head into some form of existence to share with others or just to get a more solid understanding of the idea, and 3D modeling tends to be the fastest way for me to do so, so it is often my go-to option.