So Nadine hammered out a great little model of Brancusi’s Endless Column. We printed it out using a MakerBOT last night using white ABS material. It is light in weight and took about two hours to make a 100mm high model – not including adjusting the machine.
Preparing MakerBOT with printing material
Bed/base/substrate must be clean and pre-heated in order for material to stay in place
OK then. You have to rotate images BEFORE they hit WP.
See previous caption.
Le Menu
File lives on SD card. Reader built into MakerBOT
Endless Column in ThingMaker software
which translates file into mBOT language
Stuff: card reader and ABS on spool
In the translation software, temperature of spinaret and table must be set prior to initiating build. This information accompanies the file.
Insert SD card and the machine thinks… in ellipsis..
Somehow this text seems wrong to me.
As a living breathing I (as of this writing) the current trend of anthropomorphism with user interfaces is at once disturbing and infuriating.
Might as well include annoying, too.
This was about an hour in to the build
Menu keeps track of file name, elapsed time, and temperatures. This MakerBot has two extrusion heads (spinarets). Only one is used.
Getting closer
Woo-hoo!
Happiness!
You may want to bring your own pancake turner.
We were told that we had the option of boiling acetone in a pot and pass the model through fumes to smooth out the surface. Note: this is something you simply cannot do if you value your health, safety, and general well-being.
Fast cars don’t quite do it for me… then again I have one. Just don’t drive in NYC much/at all. But faster lenses; that’s a different deal. I came across a blog entry titled 14 Super Fast Aperture Lenses Worthy of Note which had some really exciting pieces of glass (did I really mean what I just said??!) featured. The images below are from that article but linked to dpreview posts.
My final project for PCom will revisit a theme from a previous work. The project will consist of an aquatic environment with lights controlled via an Arduino through users on the web. The environment is a fish tank: It’s a fish reality show.This is a team project which will be built with artist Vitor Freire (Vitor’s ITP blog).
Fish reality show.
Fish in tiny ocean.
People on the internet
Lasers, fish-eye lensed camera, computer, internet
My first purchases of glass spheres was from Golden West Manufacturing during the mid-1980s. In those days something called “Thomas Register” was the Google go-to for manufacturing research. It was also where I looked for an inert material to use as an extender-filler in silicon mold making. I later used glass beads when manufacturing luminous jewelry. Goldenwest still sells glass beads: During a 1994 studio visit with Dennis Oppenheim I suggested that he use glass beads as an additive to polyester castings for his Rabbit Factory series.
Clicking on the Goldenwest images above or those below will open links to purchasing glass beads.
“Properties of polymers are often modified by quasi-spherical mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate or by highly anisotropic glass fibres for an efficient reinforcement or by foaming to reduce their density. Solid or hollow glass beads partly combine the advantages and also the drawbacks of those techniques allowing to modify mechanical, optical and thermal properties, density and cost of nearly all the polymers. Their adhesion to the polymer matrix can be optimized by sizing with coupling agents. Moreover, glass beads have unique optical properties and can be modified by surface treatments to obtain electrical conductivity. Consequently their application field covers a broad domain comprising polymer enhancement or lightening with hollow glass beads having a low density, syntactic foams used for buoyancy, reflective products for signs and marking, electrical conductivity for metal coated glass beads used in electronics. Solid glass beads have a density of 2.5 g/cc, a high crush strength and a Moh hardness of approximately 6.” SpecialChem, 2006
The first time I shot images for this exercise, I was able to use the Tiffen filters provided, but I didn’t shoot in monochrome.
A week later I reshot the exercise using colored gels.
Red filter
Green filter
Blue filter
The results were similar to Microsoft’s legendary “undocumented features” (i.e. your computer automatically restarting): a learning experience provided by an unwanted event.
I couldn’t figure out how to merge the separate layers into one channel even using Adobe’s guide.
Image J made the process much easier , though the results were not what I was expecting to see; at least not without further experimentation, observation, and additional thought.
I shot an HDR test using a location on NYC’s historic Orchard Street last week.
You can get an idea of how clear the sky was by the shadows cast by railings on the top floor of the building on the west side of the street; across from the subject building. This image is a composite of eleven separate images during “golden hour” using a Canon 30 D with a 15mm 2.8 on a tripod with cable release at 50 ASA. I shot the gray card and used that to set my white balance. The final image is the result of eleven separate images.
Clicking on the images will open larger images in new windows.
Using the lens correction filter in Photoshop I attempted to adjust the “fisheye” effect:
Note to self:
While I am in New York, I really need to get away from my desk and shoot more. Crossing Delancey, redeaux
Solvent bonding of acrylic – in spite of its hazards to health – is another kind of magic. Solvent bonds are really solvent welds. If the surfaces have been prepared correctly, a solvent weld is often stronger than the original material.
Like all magic, there is another aspect to keep in mind when handling polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), which you may have purchased under the brand name of Acrylite, Plexiglas, Lucite, Perspex, Crystallite, and or some other market name.
If you read the MSDS sheets for the material, it reads like a wonder drug: all good, no downside – except for a little skin reaction. That’s kind of appalling. From Wikipedia:
The compound is manufactured by several methods, the principal one being the acetone cyanohydrin (ACH) route, using acetone and hydrogen cyanide as raw materials. The intermediate cyanohydrin is converted with sulfuric acid to a sulfate ester of the methacrylamide, methanolysis of which gives ammonium bisulfate and MMA. Although widely used, the ACH route coproduces substantial amounts of ammonium sulfate. Some producers start with an isobutylene or, equivalently, tert-butanol, which is sequentially oxidized first to methacrolein and then to methacrylic acid, which is then esterified with methanol. Propene can be carbonylated in the presence of acids to isobutyric acid, which undergoes subsequent dehydrogenation.[1] The combined technologies afford more than 3 billion kilograms per year. MMA can also be prepared from methyl propionate and formaldehyde.[2]
As an artist who will be working with this (and other) materials to produce work, you need to know what you are dealing with. Eva Hesse died of cancer not long after producing her signature works which were fabricated with polyester resin.
Friend, mentor, and extraordinarily important and underrepresented artist Lillian Schwartz woke up one morning with a tumor during a period when she was working with casting resins.
Max Gold and Fred-whose-last-name-I-have-forgotten were owners of Canal Street’s famous Industrial Plastics where Eva Hesse purchased her resins. Both gentlemen died of cancer. I often wonder what happened to their long-term employees (like Gil, their manager and Mrs. Gold who did the bookkeeping). Their huge shop reeked of odors associated with plastics – especially when they were machining /laser cutting materials.
I use blocks of Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWP or UHMWPE) to aid in the fixturing of parts for gluing. Teflon blocks are also good, but the material has other issues and it is more expensive than UHMWP.
UHDWP blocks are non-stick. Teflon is king.
The great thing about these materials is that most adhesives will not adhere to them. UHDWP is the same material that industrial quantities of cyanoacrylate adhesives are packaged in. The material is so inert that it is now being used as an implantable material for joint replacements.
For the relatively mundane miracle of successful solvent bonding, plenty of moving air, flatness , right angles, and creative fixturing are keys to assembly. Captions in this slide show should help explain a safe way to work.
Acrylic solvent is mostly methylene chloride
Keep the lid tight when not using.
Limit evaporation. Poke a small hole close to the *edge* of the lid.
I usually use an applicator of this size
Tillt the can if necessary. Squeeze air out and release pressure while tip is immersed in solvent.
Release pressure while tip is imAllow vacuum to put enough solvent to work with in squeeze bottle.
UHDWP blocks are non-stick. Teflon is king.
Right angles are your friend.
Solvent bonds are fully cured only after all solvent has fully evaported.
Use the forces of capillary action and gravity when bonding.
Use what you have on your desk to work.
Vent fumes away from the living tissue of your sinuses and lungs.
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