Want your own 3d printer? Cool hobby

Open source. Watch this grown. No pun inteded!

check out this artists work. The avatar sculpts in zbrush

check out this artists work. The avatar sculpts in zbrush http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=079195 I was on the zbrush web site and found this. So cool to look at. I especially like seeing the people reference!

3d printing in paper?

A wonderful link for MCOR. MCOR is a Swiss company who has created a 3d printer that will print in paper. For those who know about 3d printing the cost of the materials going through the printer is a great expense. But in the case of paper, that is not as expensive.

A great book on 3d printing

I just wanted to tell you about a book that has really helped me in my graduate studies. I hesitated in purchasing it because it was a little on the high side and the binding and photograph shown did not really make me feel confident in the contents of the book, but don’t let that fool you. Ed Grenda really knows his stuff, and I don’t think there is anything about 3d printing that is not in here. As long as he keeps up with the technology with further editions I would say it is a must for the shelf of any person interested in 3d printing. Plus his web site has numerous articles and boo koos of information. ( it also does not look very professional but don’t click away too soon. It has a wealth of information.) I was privileged to talk to Ed last week about some of my questions and my own research and he gave me some wonderful leads, which I will be sure to pass on here.

I also invited him to let me interview him for a podcast, should we decide to start up the art podcasts and talk about 3d, ( Which I am very excited about.). Anyway. Thumbs up on this book. I would highly recommend it.

The Upside Down Christmas Party

I failed to post about the Upside Down Christmas Party. There were quite a few different groups of people but there was much fun had by all. Christina Sizemore- My daughter showed her artwork, and you know there is always sculpture in my studio, along with my God's Word Collectible series. Plus the loft was opened up for 3d people to show their work. Though all they really did was come upstairs and eat cookies. My favorite part of the evening.. the fire pit that my family bought me and we broke in and singing with friends.

And of course as many of you know we ask you all to help decorate our tree with something on your person, in your car or found. Here are some new ones. ( the watch is from a soldier. I can't believe he put his watch on the tree. He is home on leave and headed back soon.)

I think we will have to have another one next year.

Wonderful conversations- ton of info

Last week Bob Wood from ex one put together a conference call between the following people and myself. As Bob put it.
The purpose of the call is to attempt to answer as many questions as we can for Bridgette who is researching information for a book that she is writing. I have had many conversations with her over the last year or so and she has toured our Houston RCT jobshop. To paraphrase what she is trying to ascertain from us is how a traditional sculptor can migrate into the electronic design and manufacturing world. As all of us know, it took us years to figure this out. Bridgette is trying to define the process so that traditional artists can become productive without having to go through a painful learning curve that may cause them to shy away from this technology.

HE knows me well. Though he also failed to say.I have pitched a second book idea, am writing articles on these subjects and a good deal of my graduate studies is around the process. On the phone were the following people. It was so great to chat with these very knowledgeable people. It was also good to be around 3D people who, when I told them that I wanted to get designs out of the computer did not say, "why do you want to do that?"

Bridgette Mongeon – Sculptor, Artist, Author
www.creativesculpture.com
Houston, TX

Chuck Gailey – 3D Designer, Architect- designer, Artist
www.otbdesignworks.com
Whitefish, MT

Gabriel Obregon – 3D Artist, Freeform designer
www.hybrid-learning.com
Pittsburgh, PA

Mike Orange – Prometal Production Manager
www.prometal.com
Irwin, PA

Bob wood


All I can say is I wish I would have recorded this meeting. You all know I have been doing Chistian podcasts for a while. Don't be surprised if you begin to also see some art podcasts posted here. I have everything set up for podcasts and my spotonradio.com station has another channel. Now all I need is the time.

More metal questions.

I'm trying to get my head around the ditial printing in metal. In my november 22 post I have shown two videos. The second one though it says shapeways is exones process. I posted the first one because it helped to clarify things for me though I was told the first video is not really how they create their bronzes. Ex one tells me their bronze is Our bronze is 90% copper and 10% tin. I have been talking with them about collaboration on the book and project. This is something I received from the production company at ex one 60% stainless steel
40% Bronze

"We print in a bed of stainless steel powder layer after layer until the three-dimensional part is done. We cure that bed of powder and then we take bronze powder and wick it into the bronze metal. How this happens is as follows. The design that was printed has a stilt as we call it (nothing more than an appendage sticking out of the part). This is added before we print in the stl file. When we set up the furnace we take that stilt and touch the bronze powder to it. At a certain temperature in the furnace the bronze powder starts to melt. When that happens the bronze capillaries into the stainless steel. If you would look at the stainless steel object before the bronze in infiltrated it would look like your kitchen sponge. A sponge has holes all over it. Same principle for the stainless steel part. So in order to fill those holes we use the bronze which is a lower temperature metal to fill the voids. This is how it becomes a composite."

My question would be this. HOw would this weld together? If you printed in pieces and welded it together could this be seamless? would the welds show over time? ( this is a horrible thing concerning a fine art bronze) I wish I knew a metalurgist who could look at an ex one piece and compare it to the Everdur bronze. I'm also curious how this "printed metal" will handle the outdoors.

A bit of trivia about bronze

I was wondering what is the composite of the bronze that my pieces are cast in. My foundry says.

They use everdur bronze.

Alloy number 8 7 3

95% copper
4 silicone
1% manganese
developed during the second world war for the navy.

Prior to that something called 85-5-5 -5 was used, but it is not used now because it does not hold up with acid rain etc. It consisted of
85 copper
5 percent zinc
5 percent tin
5 percent lead