Skull Shaped Box.

Why?

So this project started for a course at the Rotterdam Universty of Applied Sciences calles FabLab. The goal of the course is to make an object which should be:

- Made out of three kind of materials

- Made using three different tools (3D printer, Lasercutter, etc.)

- The object should contain at least one electric circuit.

Idea

At the start of the course I really had no idea what to make. So I did some brainstorming and found myself eventually with the idea of a Skull Shaped box. Using the MoSCoW method I found the following criteria.

Must have

The box should have a hinge so the upper and bottom part of the skull can move from each other. Using the course criteria the skull should have an electric circuit (LED's for eyes).

Should have

It would be nice if the skull was visually appealing, allowing the skull to be a center piece of a room.

Could have

An extra function which would be nice to implement is that the lights of the skull would dim if the skull opens. I think this possible to implement.

Prototype

At this point I have no working prototype.

Update will be posed on this page. They will be listed on a date base. At the end full instructions will be posted in an overview.

Step 1: PROTOTYPES

I started of by building a prototype out of cardboard. I found this an ideaal materiaal to start with. Because it was easily shapeable in the desired form.

After that I started searching for 3D models of a skull. The one I found and wanted to start working with is this one: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:906562.

This model will be the skull I use for the final project.

Step 2: Printing and Hollowing the Found Design.

So because the idea was to make a hollow skull (which is logical because it's going to be a box) I need to find a way to make the skull hollow. Well luckily the program Meshmixer (http://meshmixer.com) had an option to make a print hollow. So that is what I did.

I also found it useful to split the design into two parts. An upper and a bottom part. This made it easier to create a lid.

Step 3: Making the Skull Classy.

I wanted to give the box a luxurious feeling. So i bought some blue (faux) leather and used it cover the inside of the box. I used glue to attach the leather to the skull.

Step 4: FINAL STEPs.

Due to a bad print there was a gap at the top of the skull. This gave me the idea to put a little led light in the upper half. Nothing to special. Just a simple led attached to two 1.45v batteries. I used to soldering iron to attach two cables to the led.

There was just one step left and that was a way to attach the to parts to each other. I used a metal hinge, which was glued to both parts of the skull.

Unfortunately the skull wouldn't want to stay up. So I used a lasercutter to cut a wooden floor out. This wooden floor was also glued to the skull.

And then my product was finished!

In the final picture the end result is shown.