Project Statement: Autumn Tea Leaves

"Autumn Tea Leaves" is inspired by my family's trips to Disneyland for Halloween, where our favorite ride was the Mad Tea Party. The story behind the Mad Tea Party is that as a child, I would rapidly spin the teacup so fast that my mom would tell me to stop. However, although I would not stop, my parents would still be willing to go on the ride. Such a precious childhood memory is the story of my work.

I re-created the memories of this story through the incorporation of fall colors and flowers, namely the handmade pressed-flowered teapot. I further added flowers inside the teacup to further portray the story. I love the ultimate design (and so do my parents).

Uniquely, the thorns of this project were ultimately the roses. When COVID hit my sophomore year of high school, the robotics competition season was indefinitely canceled at my local public school. As a result, I was never taught basic fabrication skills (and freshman year I was put on organizing the workspace :( ). Moreover, I ended up switching to an online high school permanently, where our robotics team only met up in person on the day of the competition. I came into ROB 498 never band-sawing or tap-screwing (other than basic training).

In short, this project was out of my comfort zone.

With the open help of Alyssa answering my dozens of questions, I am proud of my work - although it may not be as elaborate as others. I made plenty of mistakes: splitting wood while drilling, super-gluing a misalignment of the mechanism, hot-gluing my fingers, printing the gears at too low of an infill, and the list goes on and on. Through those mistakes, I learned though. My first CAD gear took me over an hour to make, and now I can CAD a gear in less than 5 minutes. This project truly pushed me out of the theoretical aspect of my education, something engrained in me since high school. I gained practical problem-solving skills with the help of persistence and determination.

If I was given the chance to redo this project, I now can say I have the confidence to make an even more complex automata (perhaps adding the teapot movement). Most importantly, I now feel comfortable in the Ford Robotics workspace and Wilson Center, a place that felt extremely intimidating for 5' 2" freshman girl with an online high school diploma. I would personally like to thank Alyssa and Will for making the robotics workspace a safe environment for me. You can indeed make a fabricator out of me!