Obrut colour variations

This image shows some of the possible combination of materials and colours I played with for the 2nd series of this light object. Basically all 3mm materials could be used as a base. Ponoko has many exciting colours in their materials catalog.

Obrut light colour variations 1st set

Obrut light

I designed this light object with the idea to further integrate web2 based fabrication with my craft practice. The shade, base and fixture for the light emitter (LED) are all laser cut by Ponoko. I look forward to try a variety of materials for the base including acrylic using ‘iMacy’ colours, bamboo and metals. The shade is white felt or polypropylene.

The shade simply snaps into the base and forms a dome covering the warm-white 1 watt LED. A metal fixture holds the LED the switch and functions as cooling surface.

Base - black acrylic, shade ploypropylene

Shade close up with switch

Environmental aspects of this object: The LEDs used are highly energy efficient and have an expected life span of about 5 years of continuous operation till reaching 70% of their original brightness. All parts can be dissembled for recycling.

Quick link page for designer makers

Anyone interested in web2 based fabrication, here is a ‘growing’ collection of bookmarks. You will need to have a ‘delicious’ account though. If you are logged onto ‘delicious’ search for designartsanu and you will find these links.

bookmarks for designer maker

These links are added for their relevance for making things from digital files eg images, text, vetor-based drawing (Illustrator) or 3D files in .dxf format. I have referred to these services in earlier blogs about making a catalogue or a light object. If you know about any further relevant links please let me know and I will add them.

Production of exhibition catalogue made easy

While sorting photos of a recent exhibition using iPhoto on an Apple Mac I explored the ‘book’ option in this free software. After selecting one of the many layout templates it was easy to populate the pages with images. The basic image editing tools in iPhoto also helped to improve the look of the pictures significantly. After tweaking the templates and adding the images and some text, I only needed to press the ‘buy’ button and through my Apple account the prove of my catalog was on its way to be printed. This is just another example of a web2 based production method.

iPhoto book interface

The price of about $25 (Australian) for each copy is good if one needs only a few copies instead of hundreds to make a traditional print-run viable. I also used a pdf export of this catalog to get 20 copies printed locally, the price was comparable but the quality of the ‘Apple’ print was superior. You can download (500KB) a low res pdf of this catalog.

I have now a lasting document that helps with promoting my work and a little giveaway for everyone who supported my work. In the process I also registered as a publisher and this booklet has an ISBN. This might sound like a lot of effort for a little 30 page publication, but this catalog documents my recent ‘highlights‘ exhibition, which in turn represented the outcome of an intensive period of research and work as part of my professional practice.

Highlights Exhibitions

My first solo exhibition since 2001 called ‘Highlights’ opened in February 2009 at Craft ACT in Canberra and then in May at Metalab, in Sydney. Many thanks to Catrina Vignando, general manager Craft Australia and Grace Cochran who have opened those shows respectively. Highlights represents a change in my practice with the focus on light objects as well as highlighting how combining making processes (manual, digital and distributed) can address the designer/maker model as a contemporary approach to craft. See earlier post of the design/making of the light ‘Desk 30′.

The exhibitions were well received and successfully set up by Jason Hugonnet, curator and exhibition manager Craft ACT and Cesar Cueva, director of Metalab. Please find Jason Hugonnet’s exhibition review here.

Highlights at CraftACT, Canberra, Image by Creative Image Photography

Highlights at metalab, Sydney. Image 'Indesignlive.com'

I wish I had known about this site earlier. The “Rare Book Room”.

Many of my posts share findings about two particular prints published in Albrecht Dürer’s 2nd edition of the Painters Manual 1538 (Unterweysung der Messung). In order to see these woodcuts in relation to their descriptive texts and their ‘context’ within the book, I had to travel to Melbourne, Nürnberg, Munich and Vienna.

I could have had a very good ‘preview’ of this book on the “Rare Book Room” site where a good quality, page by page, reproduction of the Manual is available.

On the intro page of this fantastic site it says: ‘The Rare Book Room site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.’ And it is a pleasure to turn the pages of these special books.

You can see the two prints by Dürer I referred in some of my posts in the rare bookroom here:

The Draughtsman of the Lute and A draughtsman drawing a reclining woman.

My blogs about the ‘Lute’ print are:
‘Did Albrecht Dürer get it wrong, a surprise discovery in one of his prints’
‘Ist Albrecht Dürer ein Fehler unterlaufen eine überraschende Entdeckung in seinem Holzschnittes der Zeichner der Laute’
‘Further to Albrecht Dürer woodcut The draughtsman of the Lute’

My blogs about the ‘Reclining woman’ are:
‘A page out of Dürer’s own copy of the Painters Manual’
‘Male or Female? One of Dürer’s prints in the context of gender, feminism and other theories.’
‘Dürer lost in translation? German Klartext and English translation of one page of Dürer’s handwritten manuscript of his 2nd edition of the painters manual’

Preparing for Highlights, 3

Further to my last blog, Preparing for Highlights, 2.
Yesterday, my first Ponoko laser cut pieces arrived and it was worth waiting for. After peeling off the protective sheet, that still showed the impact of the laser’s heat, clean clear pieces popped out of the cut Perspex sheet. I had used the clear 2mm thick Perspex material out of Ponoko’s material catalogue.

Peeling off the protective layer

The edges are clean and appear almost polished and do not show, as I had expected, some ‘burn’ marks. As Ponoko suggests in their ‘starter kit’ the dimensioning of interlocking pieces might need a bit of fine-tuning, I found that while having a good fit the slots I had designed have been a bit too wide. This will be easily fixed in Illustrator, as I have in mind to get more of the same parts cut in different colours for further variations of this lamp.

close up of the lamp

These parts form the ‘head’ of the desk-lamp for which I had already made all other parts. The assembly was straight forward as everything, the rapid prototyped and laser cut parts fitted very well together. I used sandpaper to make the surface of the parts opaque as the clear was ‘too’ transparent. Now the LED’s make the whole head light up.

Prototype put together

Opaque surfaces

I am very pleased about the straight forward way Ponoko’s system enables me to include precision cut pieces as part of my designs. Living in Australia made it a three week turn-around-time which was somewhat testing. But I already look forward to the next shipment with parts that will combine laser cutting with laser engraving. Ponoko has great instructional videos about this on their site.

Preparing for Highlights, 2

I just put together the prototype of a desk-lamp. This object uses polished stainless steel, ABS plastic (rapid prototyped parts), an aluminum tube coated with carbon fiber, laser-cut Perspex and 3 warm white 3 watt LEDs.

Desk lamp computer rendering

For the first time I will use a net based producer for part of the making process. Most of the lamp’s head part – the laser cut Perspex – will be produced by Ponoko . A clever (company) setup that laser cuts and laser engraves materials based on ones own design. Ponoko’s well working website makes it easy to get started. From selecting the materials to producing the right file formats for cutting and/or engraving all is explained in easy to follow steps. I am eagerly awaiting the first shipment of the 2mm thin cross-sections for the ‘reflector’ part of the lamp’s head.

After modeling the lamp shade as a ‘solid model’ first in CAD (formZ) I then sliced it into the cross-sections, these sections were then imported into Adobe Illustrator and saved out in the right format for Ponoko’s processes.

Cross-sections for laser cutting

Before uploading the file to be laser cut, I printed and cutout the Illustrator outlines and put together a mock-up of the lamp shape to see if I like the design and to get an idea if the pieces fit together.

paper mock-up of the lamp

Computer simulated lamp head

I also rendered a simulated view of the final head-piece as well as the whole desk lamp. I hope the final ‘real’ object will closely resemble this simulation.

prototype of desk lamp with paper shade

What I thought was a good idea – and all the work that went into an object trying to make it work.

Responding to a call to participate in the APM (Accredited Professional Member) exhibition by CraftACT with the title Interior Exterior I decided to make a light object. This show will open on Thursday 18 September at 6PM. Taking the dualism in the title as a starting point I used a warm light (1watt LED) representing the interior and a cold white LED as its counterpart. Both lights are directed towards each other and shinning onto a slightly curved transparent screen. See image of a few preliminary drawings for this object.

This screen is the membrane separating the inner from the outer. At this screen the different light qualities mix or fuse. Interestingly you can see the cold white on the ‘warm’ side of the screen and visa versa.

However when I started to model the components for a simulation on formZ (CAD) it became apparent that ‘all that stuff’ I needed to hold the elements in place was distracting form the pure, initial idea. What are now little cubes housing the LEDs were various (failed) designs going from bad to hideous. Even the cubes I have now are somewhat a compromise. Also the base-box which is capped by two alu plates and a white rapid prototyped frame feels like a necessary compromise to me. It contains the switch, driver and an additional LED (360 degree), which illuminates the base lightly from the inside.

First I wanted the top alu plate to be in mirror-polish but this particular alu piece I used had too many inclusions creating the occasional streak in the otherwise polished surface. To hide these streaks I used the new high tech Ink jet printer at the ANU School of Art , it can print on anything up to 40 mm thick with ink. The ink is then cured (baked on) with UV light. (One of our staff printed on a room door). The pattern I got printed onto the alu was derived from a piece of white sandpaper scanned in then the image was inverted and finally a ‘chrome’ filter in Photoshop applied. I usually avoid filters and effects at all cost but this pattern seemed to be able to run from the interior to the exterior section of the object without problems.

Now that this object is together and shines when switched on it has grown a little on me, but still it is an object that is neither a lamp nor a sculpture. Maybe, if I find the right (friendly) term for it it will settle into its place. Materials: Aluminium, ABS plastic, LEDs. Dimensions: 100 x 100 x 95 mm

Preparing for Highlights, 1

This is the first of a series of blogs I intend to write about the development of light objects in the build up of my exhibition at Craft ACT (Canberra, Australia). For this exhibition I hope to have up to ten new designs developed. This show will open in early February 2009 under the title Highlights.

I just finished the first of these objects which takes advantage of new generations of high bright LED lights. The object shown here uses two 3 Watt warm white LEDs, waterjet cut stainless steel, rapid prototyped parts (in yellow) and carbon fiber tubes. Height 1035 mm.

The design is torch like with the intention to appear clear and slender. All elements are as thin as possible but strong as necessary. The tension of the bowed carbon tubes holds the lights in place while at the same time supply the electricity to the LEDs.

The main challenges with this piece was to source the right driver for the LEDs to achieve good brightness while maintaining a long lifespan. I used two Cree XR 3 Watt (Jaycar electronics no: ZD-0444) together with a driver (AA-0585) which automatically detects how many LEDs are there, 1-6 are possible on one of these drivers, this allows for a wide range of designs. The driver itself is connected to a 12 VDC 1 Amp power pack.

The electricity is picked up by the LEDs from the carbon-fiber tubes, the bowing of the a result of the ‘light fittings’ are wedged in place by pushing out the tubes. More then two could be fitted to this lamb (the driver would adjust automatically). The black round disk in the center of the yellow fitting in the image above is the LED’s heat-sink. Despite being very power efficient and producing ‘cool’ light these LEDs get hot on the back and need to have a heat sink to make sure they stay within their recommended working temperature 50 – 70 degree c. The shade is, for the moment, made from drafting paper.

The foot part holds the driver, switch and connections to the carbon tubes. I designed all yellow parts on a CAD program (form•Z) and then rapid prototyped on a Stratasys FDM machine in ABS plastic. I polished the stainless steel after it had been waterjet cut.