Post 9 – Main Project Specifications and Constraints

My project has one main purpose and several smaller purposes. The main purpose of the project is to hide the clutter caused by the wires of my vehicle gauges (water temp, transmission temp, and voltage). These wires are quite the eyesore and given that I drive this vehicle nearly every day, I see them frequently and would like to make my dash more visually pleasing. Which leads to the next purpose of the project: making the interior of my vehicle more appealing by adding character. Leather is a rather strange choice of material for the main cluster cover, but I’m happy with its appearance and I think the unique material (like the denim I used in my upcycle project) adds some interesting flair to the stock interior and dash. Two more goals for this project are implementing a phone holder and mounting an electric fan to the top/sides of the covered gauge cluster, both of which being attached directly to the leather cover at reinforced areas. Lastly, because the cluster is something I will see often and I want to be proud of the result, I plan on making the fit and finish of all parts, especially where they meet, as aesthetically pleasing and accurate as possible. As far as determining the elements which are most important to the project’s success, they will be prioritized in the following decreasing order: covering the wires, achieving a satisfactory fit and finish between parts, mounting a phone holder, creating an interesting addition to my interior, and mounting an electric fan. If I can cover the wires in an aesthetically pleasing and well put together way, while having a phone holder mounted to the cluster, I would consider my project a success.

Finishing my project in a way that I’m happy with will be hindered by several small constraints. The primary of these constraints will be the time I have to dedicate to the project. I spend lots of time throughout the week on other engineering classes, as well as working so that I can afford rent, leaving me just enough time to work on this project. Mounting an electric fan to the cluster would take much more time then the phone holder due to the wiring and reinforcement of leather that may be involved, which Is why this element of the project is pretty low priority to me. Excluding the fan, I think I’ll have just enough time to finalize my project by the deadline, with probably some progress made on the fan installation but it most likely will not be complete by then. Furthermore, the only other constraint I think I’ll face is an aesthetic one, mainly when it comes to the appearance of the cluster after the fan and phone holder are installed. I anticipate a challenge with making the cluster, phone holder and fan all come together to create an aesthetically pleasing result, specifically since the phone holder and fan will just stick out of the nice smooth form that is the leather cover. I think the best solution to this would be putting both the phone holder and fan on top of the cluster, then moving there positioning/angles of attachment until the whole cluster looks as balanced and aesthetically pleasing as it can. Fortunately, I don’t anticipate financial constraints due to the projects relatively low cost, skill constraints due to my manufacturing experience, or supply constraints since I have plenty of extra leather and wood. Lastly, there is plenty of space to work with where the gauge cluster mounts, so space should not be an issue either.