Week Four

The Bespoke Object

Progress Blog 
Week Three - February 10th, 2025

It's all coming together! The model of the butterfly clip is done!

The first thing I did this week was re-measure to confirm my dimensions. The most time consuming part was finding the right shape for the claw piece and the correct angle for the teeth. In past weeks, I was trying to flow the whole surface of the claw around a curvy line and that really was not working, so I approached it from a bit of a different way. I decided I wasn't going to add a curve to the top wing at all so that I can keep it straight for the acrylic later. Not curving that top portion also gave me a bit better of a flat surface for the little notches that the road and spring goes through. 


Although I'm not quite ready for this step this week, I prepared the laser cutter file that I'll need for the wings. Up until this point I had totally forgotten about the antennae and I think they just add another unique element. Okay, as I'm typing this I realize that I also didn't fillet the corners on everything AGAIN. I have literally put this in every blog post so far that I keep forgetting I have no idea how I can't remember. Setting a reminder for this as we speak. Something that I also changed from my first model is adding a bit of an extension to the wings because I found that was a better way to connect then that no detail got cut off. 



Here is the completed model!




As I'm writing this it's Saturday (February 8th) and tomorrow I have booked 3-D printers to try a test print of the clip. The unfortunate thing about this form is whichever way I tilt it, it still takes forever to print either way and the Prusa XL is only available to book for like 8 hours a day and printing both sides at the same time was going to take way longer than that so I just had to split it. I ordered the rest of my materials today, but most of them won't arrive until the end of the week, so I likely won't be able to do a test with the laser cutter for the acrylic to go inside the wing skeleton piece this week. On Monday (or course, contingent on the test print being successful), I would like to try to put it together with just the materials I have from deconstructing other clips, then I will have the week to do some troubleshooting if needed before I go out of town for reading week. 

Here are a few issues that I could see happening in the test print: 

  • At the begging of this project when I made my prototype, I stresses the importance of having space between the top wings and bottom wings so the claw could actually be functional. I left a decent amount of space but ultimately I'll just have to see how the print turns out to see. In the case that this doesn't work out, I have two options. 1. removable wings: I prefer this option because along with not being adopter difficult to go back and add, it would also add to the bespoke aspect. 2. shortening the length of the claws: definitely possible but I would basically have to go back and do everything from scratch and the longer claws were intentional because of the hair it will be used on. 
  • The way that the spring has to rest on the top wing might require more on an indent, if it does, I would remove some of the open pieces of the wing to facilitate for that. 
  • The connector pieces have to be longer.
I guess I'll have to see after the first test print, but so far I'm excited about how it's looking!

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