Ghost Clip

Summary

A cool 13 cm x 6 cm x 0.15 cm ghost clip that is easy to make might light up your day.

Follow this instruction, collaborate with a friend and make your own ghost clip. For this project, I worked with Anna Mozhar(link)

Objective

Collaborate with a partner and create your own ghost clip, following the step by step instructions. This project aimed at collaboration and accuracy, so check in with your partner step after step. You and your partner MUST have identical files that you create by collaborating on each step, one at a time. 

Instructions

Constraint box

• Create a center rectangle from the origin using construction lines.
• Set the rectangle’s length to 13 cm and the width to 6 cm using Smart Dimension

Triangles 

• Draw Construction Line 1 0.8 cm below the top of the constraint box.
• Draw Construction Line 2 0.5 cm from the left of the constraint box inside the box.
• Draw Construction Line 3 1 cm from the left of the constraint box inside the box.
• Draw Construction Line 4 2 cm from the left of the constraint box inside the box.

• Draw the triangles, each of them should be 0.8 cm tall and 1 cm base on Construction Line 1
  • Connect the intersection of the left of the constraint box and Construction Line 1 to the intersection of the top of the constraint box and Construction Line 2 with a solid line.
  • Connect the intersection of the top of the constraint box and Construction Line 2 to the intersection of Construction Line 1 and Construction Line 3 with a solid line.
  • Use the mirror entities, select the two solid lines, and select Construction Line 3 for the mirror about. 
  • Use the mirror entities, select all the second triangle created by the last step, and select Construction Line 4 for the mirror about. 
  • Use the mirror entities, select the three triangles, and mirror them about the middle dividing construction line.

Arcs

• Draw Construction Line 5 1 cm above the bottom of the constraint box.
• Draw Construction Line 6 4 cm from the left of the constraint box  inside the box.
• Connect the intersection of the left of the constraint box and Construction Line 5 to the intersection of Construction Line 4 and Construction Line 5 with tangent arc.
• Connect the intersection of Construction Line 4 and Construction Line 5 to the intersection of Construction Line 6 and Construction Line 5 with tangent arc.
• Connect the intersection of Construction Line 6 and Construction Line 5  to the intersection of the right of the constraint box and Construction Line 5 with tangent arc.

Sides

• Connect the intersection of the leftmost triangle and the constraint box to the intersection of the leftmost arc and the constraint box with a solid line.
• Connect the intersection of the rightmost triangle and the constraint box to the intersection of the rightmost arc and the constraint box with a solid line.

Eyes

• Draw a horizontal construction line 2.8 cm below the top of the constraint box.
• Draw a vertical construction line 1.6 cm from the right of the constraint box  inside the box.
• At the intersection of the two construction lines, draw a circle with a 1.2 cm diameter.
• Use the mirror entities, select the circle, and mirror it about the middle dividing construction line.

Mouth

• Draw Construction Line 7 2.3 cm above the bottom of the constraint box.
• Draw Construction Line 8 1.3 cm from the left of the constraint box inside the constraint box inside the box.
• Draw a 3 points arc, the first point sits on the intersection of Construction Line 7 and the middle dividing construction line, the second point should have a coincident relation with Construction Line 8. When choosing the second point the little + mark which showed the potential location for the third point should sit on the middle dividing line. The third point should have a coincident relation with the middle dividing line. Set the angle of the arc to 90 degrees and add a smart dimension for radius of 2 cm.
• Draw a 4 cm solid line from the second point of the arc along Construction Line 8.
• Use the mirror entities to reflect the arc and solid line about the middle dividing line.
• Select the mouth outline and offset it 0.5 cm inward, capping the ends.

Designing process

First, we made a sketch of the ghost clip on graph paper. We used a physical ghost clip as a reference and measured it with a ruler and an electronic caliper. We started with a constraint box, and then we divided the ghost clip into 6 parts: Constraint Box, Triangles, Arcs, Sides, Eyes, and the Mouth. While stretching the ghost clip, we found out that we could use relations, mirror entities and offset entities to help us stretch it in SolidWorks. We marked the measurement on the stretch, which made the ghost clip easier to make on SolidWorks. However, we did make some adjustments when we were working on SolidWorks.

• Because we used a lot of mirror entities in this project, we had to cancel some smart dimensions to avoid overdefining.

Before:

After:

• We adjusted the distance between the two eyes because it seems like the two eyes are too close to each other. So we move the vertical construction line 0.1 cm to the left to separate the two eyes. Unfortunately, when the ghost clip was printed out, we found out the adjustment wasn’t a good choice. It made our ghost clip not resemble the reference.

Before:

After:

The mouth was the hardest part; we had to adjust our initial design because some steps weren’t practical. Here are the adjustments we made:

• In our initial design for the u-shaped mouth, we should draw the line first and then draw the arc. However, we found it’s necessary to draw the arc first so we can use it to determine the location and the length of the line. So we adjusted our instruction steps.
• For the three-point arc, in our initial design, we didn’t add relations to define the location of the arc. We added these relations to define its location while we were adjusting the arc.

Before:

After: