Mongolian Nomads – Life and Yurt Building

Mongolian Nomads – Life and Yurt Building

This must have been an amazing experience to get to live with this kind of culture.  Their lifestyle is so interesting, but I’m not sure if I could do it.  Having to pack up all of your stuff and just move out whenever.  It is cool that they can pick a spot and set up shop where ever they want.  The yurts they lived in were simple yet complex.  They set up the frame work and had all of their movable furniture in there.  And the linoleum floors with carpets on them were a bit strange.  I wasn’t expecting them to use so many different layers on the roof and walls, from the fabrics to all the tarps for rain.  Seeing things like that really make you appreciate the things that you have, and they were so friendly and sharing which was great.  It was also interest when we learned that they have a surprising big Gucci hand bag store or something.  Not quite sure how they manage to do that.

Rapid Prototyping SL, SLS, FDM, LOM

Rapid Prototyping SL, SLS, FDM, LOM

I’m very excited to be getting the machines to do this kind of work.  It seems very interesting to me to be able to produce these proto types this quick.  After watching the videos I was still confused on how they work exactly.  The 3D printing seems to be the most logical to me.  The powder layers becoming solid from the laser of some sort was cool too though, I just hate that you have to scrape away all the left overs after. The other is coil fed and lays down a material in layers, or that’s how I took it. But this doesn’t have quite the finish leaving a stair step surfaces on some parts.  The makerbot is sweet!  I wish I had enough money to buy one, my project would be tight!  I like the idea of all these people/artist/engineers/small business owner/ etc. get to use these on their own, creating whatever they want!  I can definitely see a future in this technology.  I’m sure soon every design program will have a few of these for students to use.  And I think J leno has something like this to create exact parts for his old car collection.

Berry Plastics

Berry Plastics

Even after talking with the guys in the beginning I still was concerned about drinking after reuse with some products, but beside that, one of the first things that stood out to me was how big the molds were for the cups.  And not only that but also how expensive they were to make: and because of this they have to be careful with the jobs they do and set up contracts so they know they will get their money and use out of it before they make one.  I was also surprised at how small the holes were that the material came through? It has to have so much pressure to do that.  The machines they used were enormous to form/stack/cut the products.  After visiting here I think of this place and process every time I see a star bucks cup.  Oh and I hate wearing those beard nets….

Film: Manufactured Landscapes

Film: Manufactured Landscapes

The movie we watched in class today was a little too slow for me.  I was already overwhelmed without even finishing the long intro of the entire factory.  There were some powerful pictures though, and I had never see that sort of destruction at that large of a scale.  I’m sure if the documentary would have had more action or even dialog I probably would have been a little more interested.   It did have an impact on me though, because after the film I thought about when stuff like this was going to be stopped.  Doing things like this to the earth can only last so long before some serious consequences take place.

Target: How it’s Made – Wrist Watches

Target: How it’s Made – Wrist Watches

After finishing the project I figured that the items in target (wrist watches) would have been made in a vast amount of different locations, yet every watch that I looked at was primarily made in china.  A few of the other pieces were made in japan and other places like that, but mostly the same.  And they all seemed to have a very similar packaging on them, just with a different brand name; I thought that was pretty interesting

El Dorado Inc.

El Dorado Inc.

El Dorado was a very cool place.  To me it seemed like they had great location downtown in a pretty sweet building.  I like how the company keep it remotely small with their projects and did their work in there smaller sized shop (compared to the others we’ve seen) downstairs.  They kind of prided themselves of being able to do what they do with the "basic” tools that they had on location.  I also like their idea of having an open working environment. And the inside side of course was very modern and cool looking.  To me it seemed like a great place to work, not to mention that after work they go down into the shop and drink beer together.

Lawrence Paper Company

Lawrence Paper Company

Really didn’t know you could do this much with just paper.  It got a little boring and redundant but a good experience to see all of the stuff inside.  The coolest part was the forest of paper roles, I couldn’t believe it.  They do all kinds of different stuff, from various product packaging, label work, product displays, boxes, and prints on several surfaces. This just didn’t really have an impact on me.