record player stand
Timeline
Mar - Jun 2018
Context
Project for Stanford Product Realization Class
Contribution
Design Sketching, 3D Modeling, Machining (Milling)
Project Overview
I made this piece of furniture during my freshman year at Stanford. I wanted to create a beautiful, expressive piece of furniture to store my vinyl records and turntable. I explored concepts through design sketching, built prototypes, and used different manufacturing processes including metal forming, milling, and woodworking to bring it to life.
01 Design Challenge
This class was focused on sketching, modeling, and manufacturing, so I pretty much got to build whatever I wanted.
02BRAINSTORM SKETCHING
Some of my initial ideas included a sand pendulum, a piece of furniture to house my records, a self-watering planter, and a pinhole camera that uses 35mm film.
03fILM cAMERA
I created many sketches for the pinhole camera and tried to prototype it with Duron and a laser cutter. After lots of trials, I learned that making a light-proof camera body would add a lot of time and complexity with the tools and time frame provided. I decided to pivot to another design.
04sketching: record player stand
My first few ideas revolved around a mid-century inspired table, with a square base. A thin slice of wood would serve as a tabletop on which the turntable was placed.
05Prototype & Model
I laser-cut the parts for my prototype out of Duron and assembled them with wood glue. From here, I wanted to add more variation in the angles and types of materials used.
Using SolidWorks, I came up with a 3D model containing engineering specifications. This mid-century inspired piece used aluminum sheet, steel plate, and wood.
06Building It
At the Stanford farm, I carved a sturdy dovetail piece into wood to match a metal slot.
One of the hardest parts was determining at which angles the sheet metal piece should be folded for the most aesthetically pleasing design.
Once I knew that the wood piece, aluminum sheet, and steel base fit together and the fastener holes I had made using a mill lined up, I sent the metal pieces to be powder coated for that shiny white finish.
07Final product
Now that the critical pieces were powder-coated, I painted the wood piece, sandblasted the metal slot piece, and picked out some legs for the bottom. The pieces were now ready to be assembled with an array of fasteners.