Assignment 3 - Critical Review

Final Assignment 3

For this review, I have chosen to go with critically assessing the most recent project that we were assigned to do, which was the 1/3 of a fuel tank.

Despite proving to be the most challenging piece to form when compared to subsequent projects that we were assigned to do, the fuel tank taught me many varying techniques and in different scales to the previous tasks. Amongst the different forming techniques learnt, I had also learnt patience and perseverance when working with metal in such a way. The end result creating a sense of accomplishment and eagerness to repeat the task in order to improve the quality of the outcome.

The process of creating the fuel tank was as follows:

-       Digitally generating the fuel tank on RHINO and printing in order to create a template to form the sheet metal around

-       Cutting the sheet metal in reasonable proportions

-       Marking the metal in such a way that the creases, folds and bends aligned perfectly with the other components of the tank and the template we created.

-       The final step was to work the metal whilst constantly checking it against the template to ensure that I was on the right track and that the metal didn’t behave in an unexpected way as a result of using inappropriate tools or using incorrect tools.

Cutting the sheet metal in reasonable proportions

From the above it was critical that the sheet metal was adequately and carefully cut as any incorrect move would result in either a terrible outcome or had to start again. I personally learnt the hard way and had to start again due to poor technique when using the shears with a view to cut the metal as quickly as I could, not being mindful of the consequences or outcome of my approach. At this point is where I learnt patience and perseverance when working with the material.

The outcome of my second attempt was much better as seen below.

Marking the metal in such a way that the creases, folds and bends aligned perfectly with the other components of the tank and the template we created.

As mentioned above, the subsequent step was to hold a piece of paper against the RHINO template and measure distances to mark certain points on the paper of where I wanted to fold, bend and crease the metal then translated these markings onto the sheet metal

In doing so, I ran into a number of challenges including re-measuring and marking the metal as a result of incorrect measurements which lead to a false representation of what the tank should’ve looked like.

This process is illustrated as per below, where it is shown that the markings on the paper were then translated on to the sheet metal:

The final step was to work the metal whilst constantly checking it against the template to ensure that I was on the right track and that the metal didn’t behave in an unexpected way as a result of using inappropriate tools or using incorrect tools.

Whilst, being the final step, it was the most intricate, time consuming and challenging step. As mentioned, this step required the formation of the metal to replicate the 1/3 of the fuel tank.

During this process, I adopted many techniques, however for the purpose of this review, I will highlight the main issue I had and how I went about rectifying my mistakes.

Firstly, the biggest mistake I made was a result of excessive use of the English wheel in an attempt to perfect the curve of the tank without regard for how the metal was going to behave. Consequently, the metal had stretched excessively causing deformation of the metal. To rectify this, I had to spend time shrinking the metal in certain spots to bring the form back in. As a result, the shrinking process had caused significant blemishes and quality issues to the finish of the metal.

In addition to this, a lesson learnt was the importance of using the correct size roller on the English wheel to avoid having sharp bens in the metal which will consequently add to the metal stretching further during the rectification process of using a mallet or hammer to flatten it again.

To further rectify the issues I had with deformation, I was required to use the Nylon mallet and the sandbag for further forming of the tank

Also, in order to improve the finish of the metal/finished product, I found that the wide roller on the English wheel helped, however by doing so, to no surprise the metal stretched further.

In conclusion, despite my mistakes and the overall aesthetics of my tank not being perfect, I am confident in saying that I am generally happy with the outcome of the tank. Yes, it did test me in many ways and challenged the way I thought of metal as it allowed me to consider the behaviour of the metal and how it would react before I used any technique or tool on it during the formation process. This assignment had proven to be the most challenging one but better yet, my favourite due to the lessons learnt in the process of making it.