Reflection

I have finished the design for my car. I am really happy with it and just hope it goes fast. I have made it a little smaller than my previous designs so as to decrease it's mass. I kept the triangle thing (which I still don't know the proper name of) on the front of the car as I believe that this feature will help make my car faster. I also like the idea as no one else is doing it. I have started to cut the cardboard body out in the workshop. I was a little nervous when using the Stanley Knife because last time I used one the experience wasn't very nice. I'm fine though, the chances of cutting myself again is very slim. Especially when I cut something now, I do it with EXTREME care.

Reflection

So far in class, I have sketched two designs for my electric motor car which would be able to go as fast as possible. It needs to be light so as not to cause friction on the track, but not to light that it will flip over. The first car that I designed has a triangle shaped part at the front of it which is a feature that is suppose to make the car go faster. There is a specific name for it but I forgot what it is called. One of the previous cars had it, but all I did to my design was made it bigger. I think it will really help my car go faster. I have also decided that I am probably going to use Coreflute material (cardboard used for retail signs) for the base of the car as it is strong, yet very light. I might design a few more things and sketch them at actually size with measurements before I go into the work shop and start making it.

Reflection

For the first lesson of Term 3, we had a look at what our upcoming assignment is. The objective of the assignment is to make a small electrically motorised vehicle to your own design and try and make is go as fast as possible down a 5.2 metre track. You make it by researching, testing and using engineering methods to make your car go the fastest. I'm really exited to start this project and to see if I can handle the engineering part as I'm not very good at Maths. But for now, we have been finishing off our previous assignment which is due next Tuesday. My torch design is coming along well, although I feel I'm a little behind. I had some trouble trying to make the barrel as every time I tried to reflect the sketch I had made it wouldn't let me for some unknown reason. But with a little help from Mr Ward it finally reflected. I think my design is pretty good and I exited to see how the finishing project with look on ProDesktop.

Reflection

What we have been doing in class for the past few lessons now has been creating the assigned products from the test book on ProDesktop. So far I have finished all but the last one. The first two exercises were the 'Toy Block' and the 'Toy Block extension'. They were both reasonably easy to make and the instructions were very simple to follow. The next exercises were the 'Simple Calculator Design', 'Clock face project', 'Cart Wheel' and finally, the 'iPhone Design'. The first three were a little harder than the Toy block but still pretty simple to do, however, the iPhone design was both somewhat difficult, but also a lot of fun. Using ProDesktop, we had to try and replicate our (or someone else's) iPhones. I did encounter some problems while doing this task but was able to resolve them quickly. The iPhone replicating task was definitely my favourite. The next two tasks were the 'Energy Drink Bottle' and the 'Aluminium Motor Cycle Wheel'. The first one was still challenging as the techniques having to be used gradually got harder and the instructions more indistinct, but was still less challenging than the second task. The Aluminium Wheel was extremely difficult as there were pretty much no instructions at all on how to make it, only some very unclear pictures, which were very complicated and (to me) did not make any sense. Thankfully, Mr Ward decided that the class should not have to do this exercise, and therefore I didn't get to finish it. The next exercise I now have to do is the 'Ball Point Pen', but I'm not sure if I'm going to have enough time to finish it as these are all due Friday. Hopefully, I'll have some time to get it done and handed in on the due date.

Reflection

Our new topic in DT is Pro Desktop which was something most of the class had already done in year nine. While the new people who hadn't used Pro Desktop before got a tutorial from Mr Ward, the rest of us went straight to work with the activities in the Pro Desktop handbook. Luckily, I found the activities quite easy and did not have any trouble with them and didn't need to ask any questions throughout the two lessons. We had to make a Toy Block with letters on the faces of the block with and without a dint on each of the faces, and I am now onto making a Sony camera design that is a little more challenging but still very interesting and fun to make. Overall, I'm really enjoying using Pro Desktop and look forward to making more things in the program.

Oral Review

I believe that Rosy and I did a good job on our oral as we are happy with the speech we wrote, both tried to speak clearly and we had a decent PowerPoint that matched our speech. Some improvements that I believe we could have improved on is that we could of had more slides on our PowerPoint so that the audience had more to look at and maybe have gotten more information on our resort. We also felt that the speech might have gone a little overtime. My personal performance I think was pretty good but I did stumble on a few words. I also talked rather fast. However, we had a great response from the class as people were involved in what we were saying and asked a few questions at the end.

I thought Ally and Bridget's presentation was really good as they had an interesting and informative speech with a PowerPoint that included really cool and interesting pictures of their resort

Our Finished Product - Pictures

 An overview of our finished model

 Close up of the waterfall and waterwheel

Whole view of the lake and waterfall with the houses to the side

Reflection

Creating the lake and waterfall

Rosy and I are extremely happy with the way the water for our resort model turned out. After we had finished both the homes, mountain and all of the other landscape extras, we then finished off with applying the water features. We created the water by mixing a lot of pure glue with some small drops of blue paint. The more blue paint you added, the darker the water would become. We made the lake a light blue and poured it into the spot that the router made. We then made a darker blue for the waterfall. To make the waterfall was realistic as possible, we started at the small dint in the mountain where the waterfall started and just let it pour naturally over the edge of the mountain and into the lake below. Thankfully nothing went wrong and to be honest, Rosy and I thought it looked really amazing and that it was one of our models best features. To finish it off we main the water wheel with bits and pieces we could find in the work shop and stuck that into position just where the water starts falling down the mountain. With both elements together, our resort looks incredible!

Water Wheel type we wanted to use

Picture of a similar Water Wheel

Reflection

Creating the houses

While I was doing more of the landscape for our resort, Rosy mostly built the homes, and we are both very happy with the way they turned out. What we did first was evaluate our house designers that we drew in planning and discussed what we could actually make with the materials we had. We went with just using plain cardboard as the plain white really captured the modern style we were trying to achieve, and also because it was the easiest material to make them with. We first measured out all of the sides of the houses and while I cut all of the pieces out, rosy would hot glue them together. Unfortunately this process didn't go as smoothly as planned as I managed to cut myself with the Stanley Knife I was using, nearly faint, and had to have it wrapped up for more than two weeks to let the cut heal. Because of the accident, Rosy kindly suggested that I should leave the cutting for her to do while I go off and start on the landscape for the model. I thought that was a good idea as we could get more done that way and to be honest, I don't think I was going to go near a Stanley Knife for a little while. At least until the cut healed. But in the end Rosy did a fantastic job with the homes and they look great on top of the mountain.

 Side View

Front View

Reflection

Creating the mountain

Before creating the mountain we had to draw out on the base where everything needed to go and then router where the lake was going to go. To create the shape of the mountain, we stuffed scrunched up pieces of newspaper into chicken wire and created the shape we needed. When we finished with stapled the wire down, trimming the sides and started working on the plaster. The kind of plaster we used was called, 'Plaster of Paris'. All we did to make it was we mixed the powder with water until it was a perfect. The plastering took a long time as our mountain was very big, but we finally finished it and after waiting for the plaster to dry I started painting it. To make the paint job look as realistic as the plaster felt, we brought in spunges so that the mixture of colours would be more suttel. Mixing the paints to get the perfect colours took a very long time, but after I'd gotten the perfect colours, I started layering the paint on and mixing them together. The feedback we got for the mountain at our presentation was very positive as they sayed that it looked very realistic. Rosy and I are very happy with the way the mountain turned out. After the mountain had dried, I then started straight away with the extra landscape features. My mom and I found a great Christmas shop on our way back from school where they sell really cool miniature trees and model accessories. While I was there I bought a few fake small trees and some fake dirt. I first applied the dirt to the bases surface by painting watered glue down onto the base and pouring the dirt onto it. I gradually and carefully made my way through the whole surface (making sure I had covered as much wood as possible and that the dirt was set successfully so that it wouldn't fall off). I then started gluing on the trees with the hit glue gun (which was easy enough), and when Rosy had finished the the homes I hot glued them into place as well. Overall, I think the landscape for our resort turned out great.

Base with rough sketch of where things will be placed

First Design

Second Design

 Third and final design

My Schedule

Reflection

Our first practical lesson with Mr Ward was basically him showing us how to make the base for our hotel collage. He first had a plain reasonably thin plank of wood, measured a 10mm distance around the edge of the plank of wood and nailed 12 nails (3 on each side) on the 10mm line all around the edge of the plank of wood, making sure that the nail didn't go all the way through the wood. He then got a long, thick wood block to hold up the base off of the ground. He then glued them into place and nailed all of the nails in fully to keep then tightly in place. The next lesson was then time for Rosy and I to copy what Mr Ward did the previous lesson and make our own bases. We started off very good and we  were following the steps perfectly. After we had glued and nailed the legs on we found something had gone wrong. One of the nails we had hammered in went diagonal at the end for some reason and was sticking out of the side. Mr Ward then helped us fix the nail situation and we only have a little bit of time left in the lesson quickly cut off the extra wooding legs that were hanging of the side of the wooden plank and sand down one of the sides. We didn't get to finish that lesson but Rosy and I can definitely finish of sanding in under 2 minutes next lesson if we get to.