Week 4: Conceptual Work for the Pedestal

Today we had our first building lesson with Harry and Douwe - a perfect occasion to get some feedback on our pedestal design. We showed the construction drawing of our pedestal based on Dzhulia's new idea to the teachers. This construction drawing was developed by Dzhulia as an improvement of the cardboard prototype that we had built. Instead of the diagonal surface, she suggested to use a stair-like surface:

Unfortunately, Douwe and Harry did not like this idea. They said that the pedestal was way too big and that students were only allowed to store a pedestal with the dimensions of the pedestal that the teachers will give us. Also, they had concerns that we would not be able to transport the pedestal to de Broodbode, and spend too much money on the wood.

As a team, we discussed alternatives, one of which was to only build the top part of the pedestal and to put it on one or two big tables. The problem about this idea is the size of the table - we won't be allowed to store it at Saxion, it will be hard to transport to de Broodbode and it will look ugly due its depth which is much larger than the depth we actually need.

The alternative suggestion is to build the top part of the pedestal and to put detachable legs under it, as this construction drawing by Dzhulia shows:

Harry and Douwe were not enthusiastic about this idea. Douwe suggested to buy some cheap camping tables at Decathlon - they were on sale - which was a great idea, but we had to let it go due to the fact that the camping tables can only carry 6kg of weight and they are not high enough.

Harry suggested a foldable solution that would allow us to integrate a screen in the original pedestal from Saxion and extend the pedestal to the sides. Again, however, the height of the pedestal posed a problem, because Saxion's pedestal is lower than the one we need.

Sketch of Harry's idea (by Harry)

Dzhulia and I stayed until 6:30pm and discussed possible solutions with Douwe and Harry. Eventually we decided to first take a look at our possible wood supplies before making a choice.

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Wood Supplies

My boyfriend's father has an attic where he stores a lot of loose wood from former furniture and other origins. In the evening, Dzhulia and her brother Mario picked me up by car and we went to the house of my boyfriend's parents to check out the wood. The good thing is that my boyfriend's dad agreed to give us the wood for free. In the attic, we found wood of mixed quality. Some wooden pieces work great for us and some are less good, but even the good ones have to be cut before they can be transported to Enschede. Unfortunately, I forgot to take some pictures of the wood, but I'm going to view the wood again next week once we have the correct measurements of the final pedestal design.

On the way back, Dzhulia and I decided that we were going to realise our solution instead of Harry's suggestion.