A Smattering of Photos

Arrival of Finals

My ‘Shapeways’ piece arrived today, luckily.  I have put them on some chain to see how they hang, have a look at my final pieces for Project 4.

Fabrication for Project 3

I have decided to turn my object created in Project 3 into a vase/pencil holder.  To do this I must create a watertight container.  I think that I will fabricate this piece out of brass.  I have also decided to chenier rivet this piece together using brass chenier, the contrast between the brass and black should be very aesthetically pleasing.  The chenier rivets will be similar to the ones used on the 2^nd project, flared out using a collet punch.

Failed Print

The wax print finished early this morning however the process of melting away the support wax destroyed the actual piece.  The walls were too thin and weak and the structure couldn’t support itself.  The wax print has failed.

Print Continues & Shapeways

I sent my Project 4 files to ‘Shapeways’ today just in case my wax print fails and I am unable to get the piece cast.  I ordered 3, one in the standard “Strong, White and Flexible”, one in “Alumide” (SWF infused with aluminium) and one in “Frosted Glass”.  These are expected to finish their print by the 28^th and hopefully will be here well in time for assessment.

Start of Print!!

Issues Resolved!

I went and saw Brad today with regard to my ‘Grasshopper’ splicing issues and to ask for help with my mesh problems.  The file fro Project 3 was very easy to splice, all I needed to do was ensure that I had put the right figures into the correct places.  5 minutes after I walked in the door, the third project was being laser cut.

The laser cut 3mm black acrylic turn out brilliantly except for one small problem; the circles that I had placed on my piece had been cut out slightly skewed.  The top and bottom circles were fine however which was all that mattered, they will cover the ones in the middle.

With the issues that I was having with Project 4, Brad and I tried to turn the “finished” piece into one single mesh in Rhino 5 however it too a very long time and was unsuccessful.  Instead we opened the file in a separate program called “Magiks” and by simply pressing FixWizard we managed to fix all of the problems and create a single mesh that could be 3D printed.

I brought the file to Jason so that it could be wax printed.  The initial file, in full scale printing at high quality was estimated to take 106 hours.  Understandable Jason was not so keen to have a print that would take so long.  To try and rectify the problem, we scaled down the piece by 30%, bringing the wall thickness to 1mm.  We also set the print to the lowest quality.  The estimated time on this print was 36 hours, a figure Jason was far happier with.