KURT9000: Ideal, Virtual and Physical

Project Description |

This project is the second part of project 5. What we did is to refine our works and get our "production systems" advanced. I adopted alternative materials and equipment to get smoother surface and sharper edges. Meanwhile, I tried to make the mold transparent, and hence I don't have to measure exact amount of plaster. The clear molds make it easier and precise to obtain the identical horizontal plane.

CurFSpace No.4, T.C. Kurt Hong, Summer 2015

Alternative Materials, equipment |
To acquire the transparent molds, I adopt clear plastics as the material for my mold. However, it is difficult to make 2D materials into double-curved surface with ZundCutter or laser cutter. Thus, I tried to use vacuum former to achieve this goal. In advance, I need a "pre-mold" for vacuum forming, the pre-molds should be heat-proof because the vacuum former is going to heat the plastic to make it soft and then cover on the pre-mold to obtain the form. Therefore, the pre-molds should be able to resist the heat, so the foam molds I made cannot be used in vacuum former. Hence, I milled MDF boards to make a new set of pre-molds.

The MDF Pre-molds for vacuum former, T.C. Kurt Hong, Summer 2015

Vacuum Forming Process, T.C. Kurt Hong, Summer 2015

Plastic molds, T.C. Kurt Hong, Summer 2015

Clear horizontal plane while casting, T.C. Kurt Hong, Summer 2015

Design |

In the previous tests, I keep geometry as the only one constant in the process, I changed the pouring angle, alternated the cutting plane and aggregating in different ways every time. Thus the effect of the tilting angles while pouring cannot be manifested. Therefore, I decreased the variations in process, and kept the tilting angle as the only one variable.

CurFSpace No.2, T.C. Kurt Hong, Summer 2015

After I fixed all the variables except the pouring angle, the variation of the void spaces created became clear. Like the experiments we had before, too many variables make the results hard to analyze and also make us confused. Once we fixed all the other variables, we could control the result in the way we want.