Here are notes about what I'm doing lately, and pointers to what's new on this site. |
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January 23, 2012
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There's a crowdfunding project afoot to print this piece 6' tall, in a white cementlike material made by the D-Shape. The sculpture will have to be shipped from Italy to Vancouver, but there'll be no problem packing it: we just print a crate right around it. But only if you contribute! I did. An architectural-scale 3D printer. Sometimes, just for a minute, this feels like the future.
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I originally designed this as a lamp. If the project floats, we'll put a color-changing LED light in the center, and donors can control it online and watch on a webcam. (Donors will also receive toys.) |
December 12
Christmas Shipping
When to order to be reasonably sure your package will make it on time?
UPS Ground |
Depends what you get and where you are. |
UPS 3-Day |
Monday, Dec 19 |
UPS 2-Day |
Tuesday, Dec 20 |
UPS Next Day |
Thursday, Dec 22, by noon Eastern time. |
International |
Wednesday, Dec 14 * |
Our last shipping day is Thursday the 22nd, and we'll be back in the office Monday the 26th.
* Express Mail International shipments aren't time-definite, and they depend on where you are. This is only my best guess.
December 12
The Mini Beebo baby toy finally made it to store shelves. Since this is its first Christmas many retailers are out of stock, but Toys R Us says they have some.
How I pictured it. |
How it looks at Fat Brain. |
November 24
...and it is on.
November 23
Clouds are gathering. This year's clearance sale will start soon. Could be as early as Thursday night.
November 15
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Now I have a couple of lighting designs available at ornament size. |
October 18
I forgot to mention that I made a hypercube pendant. OMG!
I also put up this design, which is now celebrating its 20th birthday.
October 18
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I made a design. This is exactly half as complex as I think it should be, but when I got to this point it seemed like a good place to take a breather. It's here on Shapeways.
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September 27
4D Polytopes! I put a complete set of the six convex regular solids in four dimensions on Shapeways. These are like the five Platonic solids in 3D, but you can see by the fact that there are six of them that 4D is much better than here. They are the 5-cell (simplex or hypertetrahedron), the 8-cell (hypercube), the 16-cell (cross polytope, dual to the hypercube), the 24-cell (no analogue in 3-space!), the 120-cell (hyperdodecahedron), and the 600-cell. Whew! The hypercube and cross polytope are each available in two different projections because it seemed to help me think about them. |
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MGX by Materialise has designer shops now, and they're making a couple of my jewelry designs in tinted stereolithography. You might take a look at the other designers there too – it's a well-curated collection. |
September 23
I have this biomorphic piece here in metal, plus I put it on Shapeways for plastic models. I bet a transparent one would look nice.... |
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July 27
This show The Code aired today on BBC Two: the first of three episodes about math. It has a treasure hunt, to take place in the UK, looking for this:
The show's Gamesmaster (sic!) blogged about it.
To show how this project developed from vision into metal, here's a preproduction rendering from the CAD model:
Even I find this slightly eerie.
Your first questions answered:
About the size of a large grapefruit, a couple of pounds. It lifts off the base so you can handle it freely. | |
The bronze part is a 3D print made directly in metal. The material is a composite of stainless steel and bronze, heat treated to produce the patina. | |
The silver parts are sterling castings from waxes made by 3D printing. There are 22 of them, they snap-fit onto the bronze/steel skeleton. | |
I designed it using 3D CAD software, mostly Rhinoceros. | |
Yes, it's the five Platonic solids. The outer four are in their dual positions, and there is a pair of opposed tetrahedra in the center because the tetrahedron is self-dual. It's a little like this etching by Kepler:
I was already somewhat familiar with this as a model. |
Shout outs:
Shapeways pulled this project together. | |
Ex One did the metal printing and finish, including the patina. Want to get some metal prints of your own? Buy them through Shapeways, you'll get the same quality and not far from the same prices that I do. | |
Diaro did the silver printing, castings and polishing. Want some CAD/CAM silver? Again Shapeways is most likely the easiest way to get in touch. I'm sorry, I spoke too soon! they're not offering silver as I write this. We may hope it comes back.... | |
Gideon Weisz sanity-checked the design and helped assemble the parts. | |
The Base Shop made the hexagonal granite base. | |
Julian Phillips, my BBC contact for this project, worked fast, clean and decisive. Thanks. | |
And, thanks and awe to the crew on Crack the Code Facebook page, who have inferred much of the structure of this object from an irregular bag of cross-sections, purely for fun. |
July 24
That piece I designed in April printed like this:
I think it's not quite finished...but it's close.
July 19
The first biomorphic mini is up.
Hedgehog or cheese-grater? Now you can have both.
May 20
This isn't a real update – I'm working on something that I can't talk about until it's finished – but just to say that I've collected up the pendants onto their own page, and I put up some photos from a commission that I did a few years back.
Apr 28
I just sent a new piece to be printed:
Apr 16
I spoke at the closing session of the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Then I played some Bach and spun LED poi. They were a lovely audience!
Mar 18
I put a couple of metal-printed pendants on Shapeways.
I don't usually announce Shapeways updates here, but my own samples of these just showed up today, and they're so nice I'm thinking I should carry them on this site too. Anyway, they're available now in gold plate, antique bronze (not plated) and steel finish. This photo shows the matte finish, I haven't tried the glossy.
Mar 10
Sorry about the price bump on the new minimal-surface pendants. My suppliers adjusted without warning and I have to follow – such is life on the cutting edge.
Mar 4
A new piece. I'm not sure I want to talk about it.
Mar 3
Two new pendants are up. Pretty much the most adorable thing I have ever experienced: math, yet kawaii.
Feb 17
The snap-fit construction that I designed last month has been verified. It works!
I tweaked it up and rendered it out.
I'll release the design after the SME Rapid conference, which is in late May.
Jan 27
Two new pieces are here. I've gotten into a more biomorphic vein lately, though still symmetrical.
Jan 22 2011
Hardware
Cabinet knobs and drawer pulls are out.
In other news, the New York Times ran a nice survey article on 3D printing as it's becoming available to grass-roots users. They used an uncredited photo of my Möbius Net piece, and linked to my Shapeways shop under the rubric "odd art pieces". Well, publicity is publicity.
Also in other news, I designed a snap-fit puzzle for this year's SME Rapid trade show. It remains to be seen whether it will assemble, still less work.
Dec 20
Christmas Shipping
Please order by these dates to be sure there's time for your package to arrive:
3-day |
Monday, Dec 20 |
2-day |
Tuesday, Dec 21 |
Overnight |
Wednesday, Dec 22 |
Thank you
for an unexpectedly good holiday season. It's the best present I could ask for, and it looks as though
the Klein Bottles are just holding out.
In other news, you may have wondered what happened to this toy which I posted about last year:
It was briefly available in stores, but was recalled in mid-2010 due to issues that came up in manufacturing. It's now been retooled and will be released again next spring as the "Beebo" by Rhino Toys.
Don't tell anyone, but there might even be a sequel.
Dec 9
Christmas Shipping
I recommend ordering by these dates to make sure there's time for your package to arrive:
International |
Tuesday, Dec 14 |
UPS Ground |
Wednesday, Dec 15 |
No Blue Light Specials
I know some of you are waiting and I apologize in advance (hi Peter!), but there won't be a factory-seconds sale here this year. The seconds were boring in 2010, mostly slightly bent hypercubes, and I have many other excitingly urgent projects, and I'm just not finding the time to type them in.
Shortages
Because of unexpected publicity, I'm low on Klein Bottle Openers and Borromean Rings Pendants. I'm doing all I can to get more, and we're filling orders as they come in, and I'll let you know when these are out for the season as soon as I know myself. I'm sorry for the uncertainty – we're out on the edge of 21st-century manufacturing technology with these pieces, and this is what it's like here.
Lastly
I made a frivolous render of this piece, as it would appear carved in solid ruby:
Rendering is a trap with this type of work: it's always easier to render than to make, and with decent software the results are very nearly as convincing. It would be such fun to do more of this, but making things has to come first.
Dec 3
Next Tuesday evening, December 8, I'm giving a short talk at Mountain View. It's part of a Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous, presented by Leonardo/ISAST and SETI Institute.
Nov 30
D'oh! Sorry this site was down yesterday! Over Black Friday weekend the Klein Bottle Opener got on Boingboing, Fark, and Gizmodo, and I ran out of bandwidth.
Nov 26
And it's up on Shapeways.
Nov 18
Stay on target...
I'm working on a new piece.
Aug 13
"Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."
For those of you wondering: I'm here, bathsheba.com is a live site, and yes, I'm making and shipping sculpture.
My life has taken a subterranean turn for the last while – I needed to recharge. Rest assured, I'll get back to updating the site when I'm able.
Thanks so much for your patience!
June 20
Gyroidal structures are found in butterfly wings.
May 27
OMG pressed for time. Here's a quick shot of the colored glazes that Ex One is getting with 3D-printed glass parts:
I picked up these incredible samples at Pittsburgh on the way to SME Rapid last week. The colors are low-fire leaded enamels, integrally fused with the printed glass material. They are applied as a postprocess, in a second firing, rather than as part of the printing process. So this is not as fun as voxelwise color printability would be. Will be. But it is extremely fun! Very pretty parts, and the potential for this material is all over the place. Two or three projects still stand between me and getting design time to work on it. Dang!
May 16
Bump: I'm speaking at the SME Rapid Arts & Entertainment session on Wednesday the 19th.
April 11
I'm so excited about the Borromean pendant, I'm designing things that are tiny!
This is a 1"-tall pendant to be printed in steel: you pick the two letters and there's a choice of font.
Numbers work too, I made a Zero/One pendant because it is necessary.
I'm uploading these to Shapeways because it makes them available to you before I've actually been able to get any myself. Isn't that a little risky, you may ask? Yes, it is. Passion brooks no delay! And as you all know my empire is built on customer service: if anything goes wrong, I'll make it right. It's worth it to me to have it out there.
April 6
Klein Bottle Openers are in!
I'll be speaking at the SME Rapid conference, at Anaheim on May 19. It's a (the?) big trade show for the RP industry, and they're having an "Arts & Entertainment" session this year, and it should be darned interesting. It's not especially cheap to get into, but if you're located in the LA area and are in any way connected to the business of art, I can probably get you a comp for that session – write if applicable.
Mar 31
The webinar went OK, you can watch it here. I talked some about my history as an artist, how I moved from traditional sculpture tech into CAD/CAM; then I showed part of the modeling process for three of my things, using Rhinoceros and T-Splines in different ways. Then we did some Q & A, the whole thing ran about an hour.
Mar 25
I'm doing a webcast, or it's a webinar if you speak up and ask questions, about how I work, with live demos on my design machine. It's next Tuesday, March 30, here. T-Splines, who make a plug-in for Rhinoceros which I use, talked me into doing it. It's free but you have to sign up in advance, reserve your bandwidth today! Hopefully I won't slip on any banana peels.
Mar 19
Just in: delightfully clickety 3D-printed steel pendants in a bright bronzy finish. I may have to start wearing jewelry after all.
Mar 16
Glass printing is coming online. No, wait – Glass printing is coming online! This is the coolest thing since metal printing, which was the coolest thing since lost-wax casting. You heard it here first: right now is the most incredible time ever to be a sculptor.
This test part has been glazed with a clear vitreous low-fired enamel. It's about 3½" long, made of soda-lime glass powder: recycled bottles to be exact. The one I posted a couple of months ago is unglazed, as it came from the sintering kiln. The glaze is vital because it adds strength and seals the surface.
This design is intricate inside, and it looks like the resolution is at least as good as metal, with a minimum wall thickness in the neighborhood of 1mm. There are some design constraints due to the thermal stress as parts are sintered and fired. I gather these are complex; I haven't yet run afoul of them, so I can't say much about how they operate.
Obviously the material isn't transparent – that's not necessarily impossible, but not likely right away – it is translucent, like white marble or human skin. This effect is much stronger with the glaze, you can see the light scatters through this part better than the unglazed one below. But the most important thing about glazing is (breathe it softly) color. This clear glaze shows the native material color, which isn't utterly objectionable, but there's good hope that it will be possible to use pigmented enamels to get a choice. NB: this does not mean we'll immediately have voxelwise RGB addressability, so cool your jets. Right now I'll settle for black, white, clear...plus an enamel spec and firing protocol so we can all try this at home.
Who's doing this thing? Prometal at Ex One. Can you call them about it yet? Well, they said I could talk about this, so I'll guess yes; though you'll both get more out of it if you're already experienced with 3D printing. They're still working on the glazing and many other aspects of the whole process, but it's not far out, and if you have plausible models ready to go, they might like to hear about it.
A last word in the cool-your-jets department: if you're a glassblower or lampworker, this technology does not make you obsolete. It does things you can't do; you do things it can't do. It won't make your work better – please do not taunt Ex One by calling to ask how soon they can print millefiori – and it doesn't make your work worse. It's different.
Onward and upward!
Mar 2
You asked for it, here it comes: I'll soon be able to ship Klein Bottle Openers in a different finish, at a lower price.
Feb 11
I finally got the lasercut Trilo Lamp ready to sell. Photos this time:
Jan 9
This business needs a business manager.
Material developments are in the works. I can't talk about it yet, but cool will abound.
Jan 8