tech folio

TECHNOLOGYCOLLABORATION PROJECTelliot HENKEL#3236909

Collaboration +For the collaborative technology toolkit I chose the bag from the four B’s project, a tra-ditional school bag silhouette. For the Fibre component I selected hemp canvas as a suitable material, accelerometer-controlled lights for the multimedia component and an enlarged wooden zip for the wood component.FIBRE.Canvas was a suitable material for the bag due to its durability, environmental impact and appearance. The durability of canvas is due to its thick yarn and tight, plain weave. The canvas I bought was not entirely what I wanted but is a very close substitute, and was not stated what denier the thread was or what thread count the canvas was. It is also a cotton canvas as I could not find any hemp canvas to buy, but through the folio I wish to convey the use of hemp canvas over cotton canvas. Because the bag would not be exposed to the elements apart from small amounts of sun and rain it does not need to be treated any further than the colouring. However if it were exposed to large amounts of rain for a cyclist or if it were used for camping, treatments could include wax coating the canvas or proofing the canvas, which involves spraying the canvas with a non-silicone based sealant. Wax treating of canvas was long used for tents until the development of products like Cordura® and synthetic fabrics which are much lighter, quicker drying and water resistant.The environmental impact of cotton canvas is far worse than the impact of hemp. Hemp grows quickly, is not as thirsty as cotton and requires fewer chemicals to grow crops. The appearance of canvas was desirable for my backpack, as it suits the style I was go-ing for. It is not overly shiny like many other materials for backpacks and is stiff enough to hold its shape nicely.The other use I had from canvas was as part of the zip that worked with wood and plas-tic. The canvas aided as an attachment for the wooden zip slider and zip chain, to the plastic spaghetti to the body of the bag. The canvas acted as a strong material which was flexible enough to replicate the tape of a zip, normally made of nylon in a herring-bone stitch.The selvage of the canvas was used to aid in the sliding on of the zipper chain. If the frayed cut section was used. It caught on the wood, frayed and did slide on well. The stiffness and strength of the selvage was perfect for this process.MULTIMEDIA.Being my first time working with Arduino, processing, code writing and electronics physi-cally. I had done minimal research into similar things so the transition into starting to work on the projects multimedia component was not completely foreign to me, although I did find it very difficult.My aim was to produce a light system incorporating Arduino, small LEDs and an accel-erometer to create a product that lit up in different stages as your speed increased. The examples given in class were very stimulating and led me to try and create something that interested me.

The accelerometer measures acceleration. I used the results tested from the se-rial monitor of the Arduino program to measure the acceleration occurring during walking at different speeds. I wanted to use 3 different colour LEDs. Red, green and blue. Green for a neutral speed, Blue for a medium pace, and red for a fast walk to running pace. I could not get the code to work entirely; the lights do come on in the right ranges I specified, although they do not come on singularly. This could be because of the frequency the results are process or because of the code not being written properly. The result I achieved though is very pleasing for my first attempt at using Arduino and electronics.WOOD.For my wood component I was struggling to find an interesting and challenging way to use wood for the back pack I wanted to design. I first wanted to use ve-neers as a structure to hold the back stiff, but did not think it was interesting or challenging enough. My second thought was to create many triangles, like used on Storey Hall of RMIT to create a compound form using flat material, and use an elastic fibre based product so you can stretch the triangles apart and place thing inside the bag that way. I finally came up with a wooden zip. Due to the limits of small tools I had access to, the zipper had to be enlarged. Although the novelty of having a huge zip on the front of the bag also appealed to me. The challenge to create a working zip led me to make mock ups out of balsa wood very rapidly, to create a system of producing the zip. I used Cover buttons for blinds as the locking part of the zip chain. Then drilled out a hole slightly larger than the button on the bottom piece of the chain as the receiver for the locking device. In my experiments trying to attach the chains to the zipper, I tried three dif-ferent methods as mentioned previously. The wire was flexible but held the shape once it was bent. The veneer slotted through the chains worked well flexing in the direction that would allow it to enter the zip slider, however the veneer did not bend in the other direction, which would lead to the zip snapping. I needed something that flexed in all directions, and held it’s initial shape, to allow it to slide through the zip slider. I came up with masonry spaghetti used to drill into concrete and brickwork. Then covered it in canvas, which allowed it to attach to the body of the bag. The project as a whole went well. The wooden and multimedia components taught me a lot in their possibilities through the collaboration project. Throughout the semester the work undertaken in the three toolboxes has taught me a great deal of information and has opened my eyes to many possibilities I had never thought of before, including the trips to the textile facilities in RMIT Brunswick and the classes taken for wood and multimedia.

MULTIMEDIA

Wii Chuck Library, Credit: Tod. E. Kurt

SKETCHES

Sketch for my arduino project

MULTIMEDIA

Circuit setup

Wire set up. Electrical tape to avoid contact between wires

Wire set up. Attached wire to pins, to make arduino connections easy

Wire set up. Ground-brown. Red, Green, Blue Led=Red, Green Blue wire

Collaboration +

Collaboration +

FIBRE

Close up of canvas thread

CANVASFIBRE

Canvas straps

Canvas used as zipper support

MOCK-UPS

Veneer- Allowing zipper to flex

Wire Spine Zip Veneer Spine Zip Spaghetti Spine Zip-Canvas cover

Mock-up Zip

WOOD

Assembled zipper

Finished zip

35 mm

19mm

zip dimensions