Adaptive Designs

Overview

My wife runs a business selling hand-dyed yarn and yarn-related accessories and tools, and every once in a while I do some design work/product development for her. One type of product we’ve been working on is a small weaving loom that can be disassembled and stored in a compact form factor. Originally, we made these out of laser-cut wood boards with 3D-printed connectors.

The woodworking and assembly ended up being a bit fussier than we’d like, so I started designing a new version that could be put together with even less manual labor. I made the 3D models in FreeCAD using the sheetmetal workbench. The models were designed in a way that allowed me to create different sizes of looms by changing a single variable in the parameter list. For the material, I chose aluminum with a powder-coated finish to give the looms a combination of decent stiffness, low weight, and corrosion resistance. The plastic connectors were designed out entirely and replaced with bends and press-fit hardware.

The powder-coated surface lends itself well to engraving with a fiber laser. Shallow passes ablate away only part of the powder-coating, giving the image a subtle look, while cutting all the way down to the aluminum creates areas that contrast the dark powder coating nicely. A dithered gradient allowed me to transition from one to the other while cutting with a single laser power.

Tools and Skills Used