Snowflake Clock

Intention

My motivations were to make a clock inspired after a snowflake my cousin took a picture of when it stuck to her jacket. The goals were to imitate the naturalistic qualities and the color of the snow. I potentially made it to be hung up around winter time in my house as I feel it would go along with decorations that we put up around Christmas.

Research & Context

The clock on its own relates to other clocks in the context that they all solve the aspect of telling time. However, not all clocks are themed or designed for a specific purpose. A lot of commercialized clocks are generalized to fit in almost every environment. That is not the case for mine, it will be themed to fit in with the winter themed categories, like Christmas, snow, and ice.

Sketch

All sketches and iterations on the snowflake design before the modeling process.

Aesthetic & Inspiration

The picture of a snowflake on my cousin's jacket served of my aesthetic inspiration.

Process & Procedure

I used sketches and my predetermined dimensions to start making my model for the snowflake clock. I chose my final design after feedback from my friends and family. After modeling for a while, I ran into some problems due to miscalculations in the earlier phases. I decided to alter the design slightly to fit the dimensions I had set originally. I eventually finished modeling and cut the layers of the clock in two colors of acrylic and engraved the numbers in the clock and scored the quote: "The Future is as Bright as the Snow". After failing the lasercutting process a couple times due to not clean DXF files, I was able to complete the clock with success.

I learned quite a bit of things during this process. I learned that it is a bad idea to have unclean DXF geometries when importing it into Laser Cut. It is also a useful tip to use unite lines inside of the Laser Cut program to aid in the cleaning up of DXF files. One thing I would do differently is to plan out geometries that I know I am capable of doing.