Monday, April 19, 2010

Rapid prototyping potentials

On the 30/03/10 I did the laser training on Level 11 with Andrew Thompson. Andrew locked the machine but left his keys downstairs, so we were lucky that he brought some rapid prototypes back with him when he went to go and get the keys. I was blown away by them - my first thoughts when seeing the white powdery ones was how it was made up of particles glued together, and the similarities with the small pieces of the leather waste I'm working with. I'm struggling with how I can organise the leather pieces because there is a complete lack of control - from the shape of the leather being cut from, the flaws in the leather that I cut and around, and what is being cut from the leather. I was thinking about leather particles blowing into a shape to make up a 3D form...and it reminded me of the animations produced by artist John Jones:



This shows the sum of many parts - which together show uniformity, but singularly, are individual, unique and surrounded by space...more on this later!

The printed polymer rapid prototypes were even more amazing and what struck me the most is the potential of being able to model negative space - which becomes the filler material when the model is printed. I saw the bicycle chain prototype, and it's articulation is what amazed me - especially coming after my own experiments with tessellations/articulations in textile forms. I realised the possibility of prototyping textiles, as most woven and knitted structures depend on space between yarns/threads which forms the tension of the cloth, and therefore can be modeled in the 3D environment.

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