“Make it work, make it happen, and make it right. Once you create something, your name is on it"
Slanted Spice Rack
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(Presentation with speaker notes)
Overview
I saw that the my mother had a hard time reaching for her spices when we moved to our new house as the kitchen shelves were high for her. So I wanted to create a spice rack that she can easily organize and keep next to her during her cooking. I planned to make a slanted spice rack out of wood using the school’s resources. This was the "Brainstorm" part of my Design Process.
Design Process
1. Technical Drawings
After brainstorming, I began to create a 2D Design of my slanted spice rack by creating "Technical Drawings" as seen below.
2. SketchUp
The three pictures represents 3D orthographic renderings of the slanted spice rack using SketchUp. The units of these renderings are meters. In terms of the design process, the 3D renderings provided a great insight in the prototyping stage and helped me make some necessary adjustments (changing lengths of the pieces of wood/ changing the slant angles) before I began manufacturing the product.
3. Wood working (Manufacturing)
After I got an idea of how my product should look like through the "Design Phase", I moved on to the "Build" phase through woodworking. The picture on the left shows all of the wooden pieces after they have been cut out using the chop saw and band saw. They still had to be sanded and attached together. The picture on the right is after I had sanded most of my wooden pieces and now I just needed to attach my pieces together - I kept them in this formation to help visualize of how everything will fit together.
4. Testing and Final Product
Reflection
Overall, I gained a lot from working on this project. For instance, many of my important technology skills improved such as hand drawing skills, word working skills, and most importantly, I learnt how to operate different kinds of saws that I had never seen before. Learning these skills now will help me greatly when I do similar work in college or at a job. On a bigger scale, my problem-solving skills and project management skills also improved. As I encountered totally new problems, this required me to do a lot of divergent thinking and come up with creative solutions to problems. I also showed better time management during this project as I was able to finish my work on time and stuck to my timeline to the best of my ability. Lastly, during this project, I displayed the "Learner" aspect from the ASD profile as I was engaged throughout the projected, constantly inquired about the functionality of certain materials and machines, and most importantly, was responsible.