Construction underway!

This week I have tried to get to stuck in to making the bulk of the phone. I am making it out of chemiwood, which I'll cut and sand down to the basic shape and once finished I will use the CNC machine to cut out the details on either face of the phone.

A lot of making the back face of the phone has involved me using the mill these last few days, so I am happy I have managed to get a large part of the machining work completed during this week. My next big task is to create the radius edges, which I plan to do using the router.

Exhibition Phone - Alchemy Model Makers

I carried out some research today and came across the model making company Alchemy, that made two oversized mobile phones for exhibition pieces. The phones are about 6ft in height and have plasma screens that are linked up to speakers and laptops that are inside them.






As the phone model I am creating would be hypothetically used as a display model maybe in a phone network shop, I like the idea of using an element of lighting in the screen.

Rhino working

Having talked to my tutor yesterday I have decided the best way to go about making the phone is to cut out the basic shape in chemiwood and router the edges to create the radius sides. I'd then use the CNC machine to cut out the pockets for the buttons and the shape of the screen etc.

In order to transfer the plans into the CNC machine I have had to draw the phone in the program Rhino as below.

Construction Plan

Possible making methods:

• Draw up plans of the phone to machine cut it using the CNC machine. The drawback of this method is that I don't want to be spending too much time on the computer. I won't be learning many hand skills that are transferable in industry.
• Laser cut different layers of the main phone body, make contours to form the radius edges of the phone. This will mean sanding and filling by hand, which will not be as accurate.
• Milling out the main face of the phone in chemiwood. This will provide me with all the cut outs for the buttons and screen etc and also the radius edges. Can then heat bend over a former to create the sloping aspect of the phone. Advantages of using the mill will mean I can improve on my machining skills and rely on laser cutter for cutting the buttons etc.

Phone fascia

In order to make the phone I sent off for the fascia of the W580i - which allows me to take the measurements I need from it.

Deciding the scale

Today I made a sketch model of the mobile phone W580i out of blue foam. I have decided to create it at a scale of 3:1, with a working sliding mechanism to it.

Introduction

For this project I am creating a product model of a Sony Ericsson mobile phone. I'm going to make it the W580i model (shown in the picture below) to an enlarged scale, of which I still have to decide.