Design and Fabrication of an EMD

My best work days usually involve creating something from scratch. It's often about taking a conceptual idea from my head to a sketch, then into Maya or RhinoCAD and then fabricating it in the shop. I enjoy covering the full spectrum of conceptual, functional and aesthetic design to fabrication and realization. Some of my work only exists in the computer but on certain projects I get to see and hold actual items at the end of the day.

Last Friday Dec. 2nd was time to fabricate the EMD, a component part for a large prop I designed several months ago. I started the day over a morning cup of coffee while making a sketch to help visualize alignment of the internal parts and details for the sculpting I would do. Next I went into the shop and fabricated it. Lastly I took the formed part back to the computer and used CAD/CAM to design and laser cut ring and cover plates.

In the shop I sculpted what we call a "plug" which is used to create a shape to pull a vacuum form over. Here's the plug with a thin test pull.

Here's the first full pull using 0.90" thick Styrene. It looked good so I cut it out and called it done.

Here's the final plug and the vacuum form. You can see holes I added to the plug to ensure a tight pull.

I wired up LED's, cut a ring plate to mount them and trimmed out a radial fit in the top section of the part. Next I need to solder connections, cut LED holes, add a switch in the cover plate then assemble, mount and paint the component on the final prop.