I have decided today that this week is going to be different. It didn’t get off to a good start as I was ill yesterday, but from today I’m going to do my best to do everything right. So far this morning it has all gone well, apart from catching my thumb between my work and the handle of a saw…

I have cut down the bottom section of the phone and filed and sanded it into the right shape. It’s actually looking pretty good now it almost resembles a phone! There is going to be a lot of filler needed though, the bottom section is slightly too narrow to fit the main body so once I have glued it in place I will have to fill down the sides.

I attempted to stick the bottom to the main body, but for some reason it didn’t work. That’s quite frustrating as it puts me back another day; I really wanted to get it all routed today and get a good start on the front section.

I have decided to move onto working out the front while the glue is drying. I need to start with a main box for the body, similar to how I did the back, however I need to cut out a large square for the screen. I also need to angle the edges smoothly so I will be able to heat bend chemi wood or acrylic round it to create the silver edging.

The last few days have been a bit odd. I feel like I’ve been taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back all week.

It took me two days to work out how to do the top part of the phone and I was still really confused all the way through it. But now it’s done, it all makes sense. Kind of frustrating how I can never really work something out until I actually do it. I’m definitely one of those people who learns from their mistakes, and it can sometimes take a while to realise I’ve actually made one.

I thought yesterday was a good day because I finished the top sections and cut out the curves for the bottom piece. I CNC’d the button section out – I’m actually starting to understand the CNC machine, at least for doing simple 2D jobs. I then filled the curves to make them fit on the main phone body, just like I did before. I thought all this had worked great, but I then realised today that I had filled one of them the wrong way round so it wouldn’t fit when I tried to put them all together. I had to fix this today.

I need to get the back section all put together tomorrow and then possibly start on the front, or at least start planning how I’m going to make it. I need to route the edges of the back half but I won’t be able to do that until the glue has completely dried, which won’t be until Monday.

Today has been a very frustrating day. I’ve struggled to get my head round the simplest things…when I ended up with 8 pieces of wood, none of them fitting together, but all of them brilliant sanding blocks, I decided to give up for the day.

These pieces are supposed to be for the top section of the phone. I have decided to do it in two sections and a 12mm piece of wood in between them for the handle to sit in. I am putting the handle in the hinge section of the phone so it is disguised nicely from the front and looks neat and tidy from the back. I will have to make this section bigger to accommodate it though; at the moment it is 155mm but the handle is 210mm so it will be a large difference.

As I can’t get hold of the phone, I am able to take a bit of artistic license with the model, such as modifying the hinge section and also the curve around the edge. I plan on routing this once the sections are all assembled, but the curve is larger on the back than it is on the front. It is possible to route this uneven curve, but it makes the job more complicated. I have decided to keep them both the same and use a routing tool of 20mm.

The progress I have made so far is to stick the back section together, with the shadow gap (although this may be a bit too big), sanded the edges smooth, and cut all the components and buttons to go in place.

This photo shows the logo that I CNC’d and also the button, micro USB slot, and headphone jack holes on the side.

These are the laser cut logo pieces, buttons, and micro USB port, and the headphone jack that i lathed out of chemi wood.

I will spray these pieces separately and stick them into place once the phone is assembled and sprayed.

Now that I’ve got something solid that resembles a phone, it does feel like I’m getting somewhere, although today feels like I’ve taken a step backwards.

Problem solving is always a difficult one for me; I need time to think about it and making mistakes is generally what makes me realised the right way to do something. This is very frustrating when working to a deadline, so i need to try to work round this and get things right 1st time!

Tomorrow I want to have the top section cut and glued together. I’ll need to leave it to dry overnight before I can cut the angles and curves into it though. While it’s drying I will begin to cut the bottom section and maybe draw up Rhino drawings for the battery cover release button. I will need to CNC this out and then laser cut the parts to go in.

I still haven’t heard from that company, even after another email to a different one of their email addresses. It’s a bit rude really… I just need to make do with what information i do have, so a lot of it is going to be guesswork.

I drew up laser drawings for the logo and side buttons. I was going to cut these by hand out of styrene but after trying to cut one of the logo ‘berries’ it became obvious it was going to be difficult to get them all identical. Once cut i needed to sand them down to get them to fit inside the logo i CNC’d the other day. They need to fit in tightly with a slight ridge; to get this a sanded a rounded edge around the top.

I cut the buttons out of 3mm acrylic, but they need to be slightly raised above the 3mm section i cut for them; to get around this i have cut squares of styrene to go underneath them, this will give the impression they are seperate components and can actually be pushed.

I now need to wait for the CNC machine again in order to cut the charging port and headphone jack. I am hoping to get on tomorrow. Until then though i decided to do some photoshop work, experimenting with putting my suitcase into existing scenes.

This image is the sort of scene i would like to recreate. I have taken an image of a busy station from the internet and added in the suitcase i Photoshopped the other day. Because the woman was not already pulling a suitcase, it doesn’t look quite right. The shadow is too obvious and her arm looks fake (that’s because it is…i had to add her arm in as i think it is infront of her in the original image). This is just supposed to give an idea of what i want to achieve, so for that purpose, it is fine.

These two images look much more realistic, however they also look very posed. Because the ‘models’ were already pulling suicases, i just replaced theirs with mine, which meant there were already shadows, and their body language is correct.

I now need to work out the next few steps. Once i CNC the final side, i need to stick the box together and then rout the edges to get the curve i need. I then need to make the top half of the back section. This could be made from wood again, however i think it will be very heavy as it will need to be thick wood to get the curve. For the bottom section i will need to CNC a piece out for the button to release the battery cover.

Today was quite productive when you compare it to the last few weeks. I feel i’ve been getting behind; mainly because i’ve been struggling to find the phone and therefore i’m worried about getting the measurements right, but also because i’m a qualified procrastinator. However, once i get stuck into something i find it difficult to stop myself from getting too far ahead without thinking it through.

I jumped on the mill 1st thing and cut out the 3 button slots in the sides. These are just simple 3mm deep rectangle with a 3mm radius on the corners. I plan to fill these with either chemi-wood or styrene; i need to experiment with both and see which is more suitable.

I drew up plans to cut out the charging port and the headphone jack on the CNC. I could probably do these on the mill, but it is more likely to go wrong which would mean either a lot of filling and sanding or starting that side from scratch. I can’t really afford many set back’s like that so i’ve opted for the easy choice this time.

Now i’ve cut out the logo from the back face, i needed to cut the battery cover shape into the rectangle. I decided it would be best to cut as close to the line as i could, sand down one edge perfectly, cover that in tape, put filler on the other piece, and push back into place. The tape acts as a barrier to stop the filler sticking the two sides together while still getting a completely smooth finish. I will then stick a 0.5mm or 1mm piece of styrene between the two edges to create the shadow gap.

Tomorrow i want to cut the side panel on the CNC, put the box together, work out how to create the top and bottom curves, and preferably get those well under way.

I received an email back from that company last Friday asking how many pieces i wanted to buy as they only sell in bulk of ten… this is a massive problem as i don’t want to buy 10 and i definitely can’t afford to! I have emailed them back and asked very nicely if they would be able to sell me just one but still had no response today. I emailed again asking for a response as i am really getting desperate now; it is getting to the point of no return where i either need correct measurements or come to terms with the fact it won’t be spot on and take some kind of artistic license myself.

We’ll see if they respond….

This morning was mainly about fundraising; we had a cake sale and were struggling to get people who had done nothing (not naming names) to help rather than those of us who have done everything losing time on our projects.

I got on the CNC machine this afternoon to cut out the logo on the back of the phone. The final outcome looks quite effective. I have cut 2mm down so it is deeper than it needs to be. I plan to fill this gap with styrene which will be sprayed metallic silver. I did it like this because when I looked at an actual Blackberry phone, I could see that the logo was cut out of the back panel and small silver components were in the holes. This created the tiniest of indents, which at my scale, will obviously be much larger. I think an indent of 1mm should be enough.

I then created these Photoshop images to help me visualise the last outcome. I also plan to do quick mock-up’s of what the final image will look like for the advert, just using images found on the web or that I have taken myself. It will look very basic, but it is just to get an idea of what to aim for.

Tomorrow I need to try to cnc the charging part on the side panel, or at least finish the drawings for it and have it ready. I also need to mill out the button sections and begin cutting the buttons out or chemi wood.

Now I have CNC’d the logo I can cut the battery cover shape out of the wood to get the shadow gap I need.

Today is a better day for working things out. After a chat with Paul this morning i finally have a clear picture of how to make the back half of the phone.

I need to cnc the logo (ed says this should only take 15 minutes), mill the button indents into the side, bandsaw the curved battery section then fill the second half up to it, stick the whole lot together and router the radiused edges.

I am in the process of trying to buy the casing for the Pearl from a company based in China or America (I’m not sure which). The only way to buy anything from them seems to be to email them, but I have had no response so far which is frustrating. It would help me a lot if I was able to get the phone for reference; a lot of things I am not too sure about and the detail on the images I have isn’t the best.

I need to crack on with the back half; I think once I get stuck into that then the front half will come more easily. I am giving myself a week to make the back section, not including spraying as that will be done once it has been assembled.

I need to look into buying a digital photo frame large enough to fit my screen. Also I need to draw up the logo for the front so I can get it sent away and cut out in vinyl.

I’m feeling quite lost today. Not really sure what i should be doing and when. I have redrawn the side view of the phone on Rhino so it’s much more accurate now.

I have been trying to work out how big the core box needs to be for the back section. I drew a rectangle inside the phone up to where the curves start. This is going to be my base for everything else to go onto. I will use 25mm mdf for the back panel as the radiused edges are quite big. The detail such as buttons and the logo will need to be machined into the back and side panels, however i am not sure whether to do this before machining the radius or after. i think the logo can go in now, but the buttons on the side may be effected by the curves.

I am worried about the time that’s passed, it’s nearly 3 weeks since the project started and i haven’t really made anything yet. I have cut the back panel and sides for the main box, but still need to work out materials and how to make the rest of the phone. More research is definitely needed; i think that’s my job for tonight.

The first thing I needed to do was to scale the phone up to the right size, which, because I don’t have the actual handset to take measurements from, it would have to be done using information I could find on the internet. I have spent the last couple of days researching into the Blackberry 8220 and getting all the images and specifications I can to make an accurate model.

The size of the model has been determined by the size of the suitcase I am taking the fold up handle, wheels, and feet from. because of the handle width and the curves the phone has, it is going to be quite large; 6.5:1, this is roughly the size of a regular suitcase.

The scale drawings above show the correct dimensions of the final model in 4 views. I am having trouble finding information and images for the top and bottom views of the phone, so I may have to use a bit of guess-work to draw these.

The next stage is to work out how to make it and what materials to use, which is what I have struggled with. It has been suggested that I start with 2 boxes; one for the front and one for the back; and then machine the shape from those. I would then take a GRP mould and then a final cast in GRP.  This idea seemed simple to begin with, but the more i thought about it, the more I worried it wasn’t the right way to go about it. I went and spoke to Jeremy, one of the workshop technicians, who suggested maybe i could make the shape out of foam and then use that as a master to mould from, this would be the cheapest and most lightweight way of doing it. This discussion confused things for me and I began to think of other options I could try; blue foam, yellow foam, mdf, and finally mdf and foam.

The blue foam reacts to resin so I would have to seal it before I could mould it. Yellow foam can be nice to work with but is very expensive; I could easily use £100 worth of yellow foam just on this model. Mdf seems to be a good in between, but it would make it heavy as the edges would need to be thick enough for me to shape the curves. The mixture of mdf and foam would probably not work very well due to the different machining properties of the material. They would sand down at different rates and it would take a lot of filler to make them seamless.

I had another discussion with Paul today about all my worries about the materials. We decided that I would need to start simple with an mdf box for each side. The box would then be clad in acrylic or chemi wood or styrene depending on the piece I am making. Each part will need to be constructed separately, so I need to think about the manufacturing process of the phone itself.

I am now not going to mould the master, the model that I machine now will be the final product. If I was going to reproduce these or if it needed to be really light weight, then I would mould it and cast it using GRP, however, as long as it can be pulled on the wheels and looks high quality then it doesn’t matter what it is made of.

I have spent the last few days researching what phones there are available and which of these are suitable for this project.

It would be really convenient for me if i could just use my phone (Sony Ericsson C905) as i could take measurements directly from it and be able to see any detail i might not notice in pictures. However, as you can see, the phone doesn’t look very suitcase like. The buttons on the bottom take too much focus away and i don’t like the idea of having such a large screen, it also doesn’t give the impression of opening like a suitcase because it is a slide phone rather than a flip.

Other mobiles i have looked at are Nokia, Samsung, Sagem, and Blackberry, as well as Motorola. the new Motorola Razr probably would have been perfect, but myself and my tutor both thought this design is a bit dated and hasn’t really changed since it first came out years ago. For this ‘advertising campaign’ image to work, it needs to be for a new, modern, unique looking phone, and the Razr just isn’t right.

These Sony Ericsson phones look like perfect little suitcases;

They have rounded edges, flat bottom and top perfect for handles and wheels, not a lot of detail, and brightly coloured. I can imagine a range of these bags, in a selection of colours and sizes on sale in many luggage shops; however, the market i am aiming at is more the business side of things rather than the young, female market which is what these will target.

I am picturing the final advert to be an image of a business man or woman in a busy station or airport pulling their suitcase behind them, so really i need a phone suitable for business use. Only one brand of phone really comes to mind when you start to talk about business, and that is the Blackberry.

Whilst searching for suitable phones i came across one that looks, new, modern, sleek, fashionable, and very business-like; the Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220.

This phone is perfect for this project because of it’s modern looking front face with a screen that blends in with the rest of the phone, a simple and aesthetically pleasing camera lense and flash, and also gives the impression of a zip with the seam around the edge.