Project Duration: 7 weeks Advisor: Mark Baskinger, CMU Tools: Solidworks, Cold working, Leatherworking↗, Prototyping
Designing a computer mouse has been a long awaited passion project for me. This mouse became an exploration on how materiality can change our relationship with a product.
One important design constraint was to stress repeatability in the manufacturing of a high craft object.
Exploring the combination of dissimilar materials excited me. Using both ancient and new age technologies led to a truly anachronistic object.
Using 3D printed forms to wet mold leather allowed complex geometry I could not have formed by hand.
Coldworking the brass gave it the spring required for clicking actuation.
Polishing bronze infused HDPLA maintained the precision needed for electronics. These are my tests polishing and heat treating samples.
Much of my design process was led by modelmaking and experiments. Switching between sketches, CAD, the anvil and carved foam models.
Each component had several iterations. The biggest challenge was translating changes to the metal and leather forms into the digital version of the mouse.