Post 3 – Upcycle Progress: Cyberpunk Tech

As of this week I have not made much progress. A large set back is materials collection. I was hoping to get a good amount of hardware for this project from my IT job, but we haven’t discarded much. A lot of the things we discard on a daily basis doesn’t work for my project so its been a struggle. I was able to get an old Chromebook that is no longer supported, a broken fan from a laptop I switched out, an old receipt printer, and a bowl of screws from discarded devices. I am also no longer 3D printing the case for this project. Instead I am going to use some chip board that I have from previous projects. Although these aren’t the ideal pieces of hardware I was looking for, I do have a few ideas on how to use them.

The first thing I did with this hardware was measure their dimensions to see what I was working with. I did a simple sketch of everything I was going to use and included the dimensions for them. This helped me know what I had and how I could use them.

I decided to open up the reciept printer and see what stuff was inside. I decided I wanted to use the screen even if it didn’t work. I will also split up the keys into different sections and incorporate them throughout the artifact. The printer also had three switches that I will use throughout. For the Chromebook; I am planning to remove all the hardware from the case and keep it working. I want to use it as a display and have a sci-fi tech screen playing.

I sketched different views of the artifact to get a good idea of what its going to look like. This was a challenging process as I was coming up with the basic layout as I sketched. Once I had The front view the others were relatively easy to do.

Since I switched to the chip board the instead of 3D printing, it is going to be difficult to achieve the texture I want. I wanted a smother metal like texture. The chip board doesn’t really fit this. I am still not sure what I will do to achieve a smother texture. Overall, My progress has been slow paced since, I didn’t do much because of the lack of materials. I am hoping to make good progress throughout the week and complete the artifact.