What Time Is It?

The great thing about CAD is that you can see what your end product will look like before you even build it.

For my last intern project at Autodesk, I worked with my mentor Sachlene to create an Arduino powered word clock. I was first inspired by these three tutorials: one, two, three, and decided to create my own version of the word clock. I was also fortunate enough to have access to Autodesk's Pier 9 facility to laser cut wood and solder the electronics together. I've got a few photos of my process below!

I found a simple font online and then took my lettering layout into Adobe Illustrator. Turning each letter into a stencil was tricky, and though I got the O, R, A, and Q, I forgot the P and had to glue the middle area back to the board with a tiny piece of wood in between. Also, since the 2'x3' sheet was a little warped, I ended up running 3 total passes to get 95% of the lines fully cut through. However, this made the edges of my wooden baffles charred and sticky. I ended up having to re-cut all of the baffles, but each pass took 20-30 minutes to do, so I lost a lot of time on this project just dealing with laser cutting.

Since I soldered a little for a class at Illinois, I was comfortable with soldering the resistors and LEDs together (which, by the way, I had to do 98 times). When I was testing my LEDs, I was ecstatic that they even turned on and fit in the back board and baffles! I had a lot of fun staying late into the evening at Pier 9 removing the copper off the back of a stripboard using a screwdriver and drill bit at Pier 9. Finally, I worked with my electrical/computer engineer brother to finalize the wiring. How lucky!

I was also lucky to have duct tape, since it held up/together the interior of the clock.

The best part about this clock (aside from all the knowledge and experience I gained) is that it actually keeps time.