Putting Together the Acrylic Model

The time has finally come! And I'm still quite nervous about this.... But it is not the time for shaky hands!

Here are some images for the development of the acrylic model:

 

Here is an image of the slotting method I developed for this model. Each part has a slot in it that slides down a spine and slots into grooves that are notched into the spine, and once all the pieces are in place there is a thin strip of acrylic that slots neatly down through all of the holes left in the slots of all the pieces holding them all in place. I thought it was quite genius if I do say so myself!

 Here I used elastic to tie the two pieces of my model together that mold to each other. I used elastic to begin with because as I heated up the acrylic it would pull both of the pieces together into the right shape.

Once the two pieces were in the right shape I replaced the elastic with nylon fishing wire to complete the aesthetic. I found that I did this a little prematurely as I had to do a little bit more molding with the heat gun, and this ended up melting a bunch of the wire so that I had to start again. It all worked out in the end though!