Sheet Metal Toolbox - vCard Portfolio

Project Challenge

We were asked to just design a toolbox from an 8x12 inch piece of sheet metal that we would trim and later bend into a toolbox.

Design Research

Before we started designing, we watched some videos on how to hem and flange in Autodesk Fusion, which we used to make our designs. And then we were aided by a blueprint we could use as a reference to design our own toolbox.

Design Concept

In Autodesk Fusion 360 I designed my own version of the toolbox, mostly inspired by the design that we were given. But my friend and I were making it with didn't notice that the main box was actually 3 pieces instead of one so we designed it in one piece. And we also learned that making it in one piece actually made it more stable, and so we just rolled with that and then made our own handle again, inspired by the blueprints we were given, due to us deeming the design too complicated.

Construction Process

This was pretty hard to create; we had never worked with sheet metal before, so this was new for me, and engraving a design onto sheet metal I found hard. I have no pictures from designing onto sheet metal, but, sadly, I failed at one, designed another that was bad, but I did design another one that was good. I had designed my good design on the opposite side of the same sheet metal I made the bad one on, and ended up trimming the design while looking at the bad design. Due to this I ended up going with my bad design, with it being shorter and longer than it should be. But I had an Idea of something to do with my terrible toolbox. With permission of the teacher, my friend and I combined our toolboxes to be a T shape and allow more space.

Project Evaluation

Again, this was super annoying to make due to us never using sheet metal before. My problems mostly came from negligence when not paying attention to what parts of my design I was cutting. Then also hemming parts so that they wouldn't dig into people's hands when they hold it was also super annoying cause sometimes it would only fold half of what I wanted to hem, for example. I think adding something like a retractable cover on the top toolbox would also be useful so that nothing would fall out of it easily.