For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious, we celebrate objects and rituals in all their glory!

8.04.2010

Slip Casting Fun: 4 REALZ

So as you know we've been bustling our little piggy behinds on bringing these little piggy to the market. The NY market at the NYIGF to be exact!!
Based on what we learned from our slip casting class....we realized there's a reason why humans make machines like 3D printers so we don't ever have to make imperfect models from scratch! Thanks to our duplex mate/friend & confidant/pro Solidworks user, Jared of General Assembly was able to help us draw up a perfect Chalk-it-to-me Piggy Bank model!! But also his office just invested in a new 3D printer and so we got to try it out and also see the magic birth-giving/clone-making of our version 2.0 piggy bank!

Here's the version 1.0 piggy accompanying Jared while he drew it up on Solidworks. I'm still proud of us for making the first piggy from scratch, but there's just still too many imperfections of uneven bumps and surfaces that we didn't feel okay taking it to the market with it... :(
Here's a rendering of version 2.0 piggy on the screen....ahh....so perfect and smooth looking....
After much tweaking and refining of version 2.0 piggy. Jared sent it to their magical robot 3D printer...where it literally spews out a liquid resin material and prints it layer by layer in .00000000001 mm (a little exaggerated, yes, but you get the idea ) layers and builds it from bottom to the top like a topographical map.
Here's the cloning of the pig in the machine. (play some sort of sci-fi soundtrack)
After almost 24 hour of straight printing we got the first half of version 2.0 cloned piggy! I could have stood there watching it the whole time if I could since it was so mesmerizing to look at....
We even got our logo integrated on its belly! It just totally blows my mind what computers & machines can do!! I freaking love machines!!
Here's Dylan with second new born!! ...just the first half of it.
Here' are the two halves getting primed and wet sanded so they'll have even more perfectly smooth surfaces...like a baby's tush. :)
Here's a comparison photo of the first piggy. Granted the first version has its own personality and charm, I think the second version's refined contours and proportions is bringing it to a higher level of awesomeness! But we still love version 1.0 piggy just as much as despite its slight flaws!
...and here it is!!! Version 2.0 piggy master model! We're so thankful of all the hard work and the hours that Jared has put in to help us making all this happen!! We wouldn't have been able to take the pig to market if it weren't for all Jared's awesomeness!!
Now we just have to see how the real slip cast ones will turn out!!
Can this get any more exciting....and the answer is....YES of course!

1 comment:

Jessica said...

This just blows my mind...so fantastic.

I may have to have one of those piggies!

And I agree, although 2.0 is all sleek and nicely proportioned...1.0 is very charming.