Portfolio: Garrison Nazare

Throughout this class, I learned a lot about the intricacies that make designs enjoyable and categorize their aesthetics. I took the initiative in this class because it gave me creativity and freedom while choosing what to work on and what projects to pursue.

Figure 1: Base of Lamp in SolidWorks

Figure 2: Lebron James Lamp

The first project that I worked on was an upcycling project. The upcycling project used a sports bar aesthetic to create a lamp that could be used in my house and my room. I had a bottle of special edition LeBron Hennessey that I used to upcycle. The lamp was made using a custom kit I purchased from Amazon and 3D printing. For the 3D printing, I went through a couple of iterations. I used the fabrication method to make the base and an adapter for the actual lightbulb and shade.

I was initially going to make a multicolor base that showed a basketball hoop and important dates for LeBron James’ major basketball milestones. After much thinking, I decided to use his logo to make a base for the lamp.

I found an online picture of the base to create the base. Then, I used cropping and measurement tools to make dimensions using pixels. I used the pixels to create an accurate and proportional model. After creating the model, I scaled it to the desired size in inches. I went to print the base but realized the size was unrealistic because of the vast amount of PLA needed. I hollowed out the base to get around this and only added supports where necessary. Then, I could put the lamp together and make a functional decoration for my house.

Figure 3: Electronics of Watch Winder

Figure 4: Full Watch Winder

The next project I had for this class was the main project for the semester. There was a lot of freedom with the topic, so deciding what I would create was hard. After racking my brain for things that could be useful and a fun challenge to make, I finally thought of making a watch winder. I got this inspiration because I was recently gifted an automatic watch that uses movement to power its battery.

The creation of the 3D-printed parts was relatively easy. I used cults3d.com to source and download parts for the print. After downloading all the parts, I tried to modify them to work in SolidWorks. It was tough to adjust them because of how the files were imported into SolidWorks. Because of the difficulty with editing the raw CAD file, I made the minimum changes to better fit my aesthetic.

The most challenging part of this project was the electrical work. This involved coding an Arduino, with which ChatGPT assisted me. Then, I had to solder all the connections and buy a suitable power source. It took a little while, but overall, it was a very rewarding project.

This class was honestly a breath of fresh air. My other classes were significant technical classes, and I was not able to effectively display my creativity. I enjoyed this class and will continue to experiment with creative projects in the future.