The second fabrication assignment is centered around streamlining our fabrication process, and building 5 or more of the same object as a result. I decided to maintain my focus on absurd and user unfriendly interfaces and made an awkwardly big, cube-shaped, wooden USB flash drive.
It all started with a trip to Home Depot for purchasing the wood—I ended up going with oak, purely based on feel. I was planning on my cubes having a side length of roughly 3 inches, so I got a 6ft long, 3in wide, 0.75in thick beam, meaning that each cube would be produced by glueing together 3 squares 0.75in deep each.
Before glueing the cubes together, I planned the way the USB port is going to be exposed. I went for circular holes in the centers of one face of each cube, deep enough to fit a USB memory stick, and cover the hole using a laser cut circular piece, with a rectangular center through which the USB port would come out.
For a moment, I considered changing the design from a cube into a more complex shape, but decided to abandon the direction after a few failed experiments on the sander.
The next step was to glue the pieces together in order to get the actual cubes.
At this point, all that was left to do was applying a finish to the wood, geting some real USB flash drives, placing them in and glueing everything.