Project 3
Research and Inspiration
This week I focused on painting my tiles and getting them ready to be presented to the class. I wanted to synchronicity to occur with this idea so I didn’t have any initial idea that I knew I wanted to follow through with. I just left the four molds sit on the counter in my kitchen. It is a dark granite countertop but eventually I had this idea that I wanted to paint them as marble tiles. I ended up looking at some marble tiles online and found a look I wanted to attempt to replicate.
Now that I knew what I wanted I needed to find some inspiration for how I was going to accomplish this task. I originally looked at doing the water dipping method that a lot of custom automotive shops do with rims or interior plastic components. I think that this method has some excellent results but the process seemed a little difficult for the time constrainst of this projet. Definitely something I want to try in the future. With that being said, I turned to a method I started investigating over winter break: acrylic pouring.
Most of the videos of this practice are filled with bright colors and attempt to get “cells” to pop up throughout the piece. However, I knew that by using only colors found in marble(white, black and grey) I could achieve the look I was going for.
Process and Progress
Some of the initial process and progress documentation for Project 3 can be found in last week’s post.
Luckily, I had some time after our Vacuum Forming tutorial so I decided to do my four molds right away. I had a couple corners that were pretty deep so the they didn’t mold exactly since I didn’t drill any through-holes for the air to pass through. Even though the molds don’t have the same dimensionality as the wood block I think they all came out pretty good. Only one of them had a wrinkle so I considered them all a success. For the next few days I pondered how I was going to paint them. From spray paint to quickdry water color, I just couldn’t decide on something that I liked. The molds reminded me of tiles so I started thinking about tile materials and in the end I decided that I wanted them to look like marble. I had done some acrylic pouring over the summer with my brother and we had some pretty great results with the colors we chose. While we chose very vibrant colors I knew that I could achieve a marble effect by using just three colors: white, grey, and black. I poured the first mold as a test and was extremely satisfied with the result so I poured the rest and left them to dry in my basement. I also had to keep a heater on to prevent the paint from cracking while it dried.
Now that my molds were drying I turned to my wood block knowing that I wanted to stain it. I had some Dark Walnut stain left over from a previous project and it provided a great color for the piece of wood. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave this by a heater while it was drying and it suffered from some coagulation due to the cold overnight. I’m not as happy with how it came out but it’s close.
You can find the downloadable model here.
Reflection
I’m extremely happy that I did my molds so early. It gave me a lot of time to decide how to paint them. I went through at least three ideas before I landed on the one I went forward with. It was fun to complete this part of the project becuase that day I had friends from out of town over and it turned into a full on art project day (well arts and crafts for them). We ended up sharing materials and they were able to create some pretty awesome things as well. One unfortunate thing, however, was that since I got so caught up in enjoying my friends my documentation of the painting process was a little lacking.
This might have been my favorite project of the quarter due to its incorporation of a multitude of methods of creation and artistic expression. Can’t wait to do some more milling and some more vacuum forming.
Project 4
Research and Inspiration
My original idea was to explore more of the capabilities of a CNC mill and use the 4-axis mill at my good friend’s machine shop. We scheduled some time after he was finished with work about three weeks ago and then it got moved to last weekend and then, unfortunately, it got postponed indefinitely so that process will have to be utilized in a later project. That being said I wanted to share some of the research that I did in preparing my model for that process.
Since the opportunity to use the 4-axis CNC mill was so abruptly postponed I had to come up with another idea for my fourth project. And fast. For some reason since I was thinking 4-axis my mind then moved onto the concept of a 4D object. This is an interesting concept and something that is pretty difficult to grasp even with video explanations like the one below. I felt that 3D printing a rotating hypercube and then projecting its shadow onto a wall could potentially give individuals a better way to interact with and understand the concept.
However, as soon as I started thinking about projection vs. perception I had another idea and was immediately taken back to Jim Sanborn’s work at the Robischon Gallery. He created a huge structure with cut out text that was then projected onto the surrounding walls. His text discussed some of the history of Colorado in English and Spanish. I felt that this was a wonderful method to present and discuss my question of projection vs. perception so I began to model something similar in Blender. In order to do this I had to learn some more about creating text and subsequently applying that text to a curve in Blender. After watching a few tutorials I felt comfortable with this process and began searching for content to support my idea of perception vs. projection.
Process and Progress
After watching the tutorials modeling my idea in Blender was relatively easy. It took me a while to get the text oriented in the way that I wanted and to get the boolean to work properly. It finally worked after I remeshed the object converted from text. The one thing I was worried about was the size of the text on the model. I made it the size that I thought it would be legible and then made it a little bit bigger than that.
When the model was done it was time to print it. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the printer so I was unable to start my print at the time I had anticipated, which meant I needed to reduce the size to get my print done on time. I ended up reducing the diameter by about 20 mm which ended up reducing the print time by 8 hours. I spent the first 4 or so hours of the print closely monitoring the printer to make sure there were no mishaps. Unfortunately, the priming tower decided not to stay standing and the printer began priming in midair. I thought this might cause an issue so I stayed for another 2 hours watching to make sure nothing bad was happening. For the most part there was no issue aside from the awesome new hair my model was getting. I decided that it would be ok to go home for a little bit and sleep so I went home around 10:30 and got back to campus around 7:30 to check on the progress. Fortunately, everything seemed to be going as well as expected and the only weird thing was the increasing volume of the print’s salt and pepper hair.
Once the model was done printing I had to remove the water soluble supports and figure out a way to properly light all the text from the inside to achieve the desired affect of project text. I found a lamp that looked like it would work and purchased some bulbs. Once I had everything set up I turned it on and there were projects all around. Unfortunately, none of the text was legible and I was unsure of the reason why. That being said I still liked the way the projection looked and fel that it represented a level of noise that is presented in the transition from perception to projection.
You can find the downloadable model here.
Reflection
Sadly, I was unable to use the 4-axis mill as planned but that will have to be a project for a later date. I’m still fascinated by what is possible in a machine like that. Also, for some reason my friend refused to let me pay for materials so I’ll be able to create something out of aluminum without having to endure the cost of purchasing it. We’ll see how many times I can do that!!
Once I realized that I needed to pivot my project I felt as though my best option was to 3D print something due to the new time constraints and the unorganized scheduling of the CNC mill in the Innovation Floor. That being said, I was excited because it was another opportunity for me to advance my 3D printing skills. This time, however, it was more about the operation of the printer as opposed to the modeling. Our lovely new Ultimaker 3 decided to act up all week and it took some several individuals work to get it back up and running. Round one of printing didn’t go exactly as planned so I aborted pretty early on because the support material wasn’t extruding properly. The addition of a priming tower seemed like it would help and it did at the beginning of the second (final) print. Unfortunately, about 4 hours in the prime tower decided to fall over and the printer obviously kept going with the process. My model was now getting a sweet mane going down one side. Luckily when it got to the outer perimeter the strip of primed material just attached to the outside allowing the extruder to continue on with its layer unihibited.
Finding a light source proved to be an easier task than I thought and I had it up and running shortly after the supports were dissolved. Unfortunately, I had little knowledge of the whys and hows of using light to project and went with a bulb that was much bigger than what I actually needed. It created a cool effect but now I need to find a smaller bulb to see if I can get the text to actually project on the wall in a legible manner. Excited for the iterations of this piece!