21. January 2013

The Help of Rhino: With the help of the 3D modelling program, Rhino, I was able to create a model of my armour and also a cutting sample. My plan was to use that sample to cut two shapes out of any material I want my armour to be made out of using the laser cutter. Using the Rhino turned out to be a bigger help than using Adobe Illustrator, as it was much faster and easier to use. Prototype: The last prototype done in the week was made out of acrylic glass. The reason why I chose acrylic glass as the material was due to my concept of exoskeleton and endoskeleton. I wanted to mix attributes of both skeletons with each other. In the end, the amour itself represented the exoskeleton (protection) and the material represented the endoskeleton (invisible, just like how we do not see our bones). It was interesting to work with this material as I have hardly ever worked with it before. It is a very stable and strong material compared to the last two prototypes and despite it being so solid, it was very comfortable wearing it. I wanted it to be able to wear the armour over my clothes like an exoskeleton and in order to do that, the armour had to be adjusted to fit quite easily over one‘s arm. It would also have to be easy for the user to put it on. Due to the lack of time, it was not possible to try out other materials, as acrylic glass was not flexible enough to be worn over a human body. If there was enough time, however, I would have also made an armour for a whole human body with acrylic glass to see the overall effect. Prototype on Body: The other problem with acrylic glass was that I could not fit it over my arm directly, as it had to be heated up with a blow-dryer and would have been too hot to wrap the glass over my arm. Instead, I used a cardboard as a substitute and it worked pretty well afterwards. Putting it over my arm was not a problem at all. All in all, the one-week-experiment was very exciting for me and it was also an enjoyable experience. The main positive point about this whole project was its diversity. One had the possibility of using technical as well as practical means to accomplish the project. Due to the prototypes, I have come to experiment with different materials and have gained useful information about them for further use inthe future.