October 23, 2011

CNC milled brass - “Suite Ownership”, for the Plaza Hotel by way of Jerry Nance. Cut from a STEP file (presumably out of Rhino) on the CNC milling machine equipped with a high speed spindle. Cast copies will be made from this piece.  We don’t often get to work directly with the big clients, but inevitably Kontraptioneering is always the place where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

CNC milled brass - “Suite Ownership”, for the Plaza Hotel by way of Jerry Nance. Cut from a STEP file (presumably out of Rhino) on the CNC milling machine equipped with a high speed spindle.  This will be used to make “sand” to make an edition of cast copies. I was originally going to use plastic or urethane foam, but it would just look so nice in brass… so that’s what I cut it in.  I for one, will be running down to the Plaza hotel this afternoon to snatch up my own little Pied a Terre - a bargain from $1.51 megabucks.

CNC milled brass - “Suite Ownership”, for the Plaza Hotel by way of Jerry Nance. Cut from a STEP file (presumably out of Rhino) on the CNC milling machine equipped with a high speed spindle.  This will be used to make “sand” to make an edition of cast copies. I was originally going to use plastic or urethane foam, but it would just look so nice in brass… so that’s what I cut it in.  I for one, will be running down to the Plaza hotel this afternoon to snatch up my own little Pied a Terre - a bargain from $1.51 megabucks.

October 20, 2011

CNC machining a chunk of butterboard for a molding project.  Butterboard is awesome. It’s super high density polyurethane, and it cuts like…..butter, and I guess technically it’s sort of the same color as butter - However, this butter costs more than $2 per cubic inch. It’s really good and homogenous, and makes amazing prototypes and models with really thin wall features and fine details. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to see the final molded product.

October 19, 2011
Happy Halloween from Kontraptioneering! Wishing you lots of bits of skull and brains and mayhem and whatnot. This is the prototype of a very much larger than life skeleton to be built in the next few days. Material is 1/4” MDF (which is about the cheapest garbage you can buy) from an Adobe Illustrator file, cutting on the CNC router.  The final will be from a 5/8” material and stand nearly 20’ tall. Awesome.

Happy Halloween from Kontraptioneering! Wishing you lots of bits of skull and brains and mayhem and whatnot.

This is the prototype of a very much larger than life skeleton to be built in the next few days. Material is 1/4” MDF (which is about the cheapest garbage you can buy) from an Adobe Illustrator file, cutting on the CNC router.  The final will be from a 5/8” material and stand nearly 20’ tall. Awesome.

October 14, 2011
The ModaRack - fresh off the CNC router. It was cut from a Solidworks file out of a layered plastic material called ColorCore (because it’s white, but when you cut in to it, voila! there’s another color, which means that it gets a lot of use as a sign material.  In this case, client Jim Keller specified it for a new product called the ModaRack, which is, as best I can tell, a modular, stackable and highly configurable rack mounting system for A/V equipment, or anything else that’s a standard rack mount form factor. It still needs the rails, and Bandit will need to find another place to play, but it’s mostly done at this point.

The ModaRack - fresh off the CNC router. It was cut from a Solidworks file out of a layered plastic material called ColorCore (because it’s white, but when you cut in to it, voila! there’s another color, which means that it gets a lot of use as a sign material.  In this case, client Jim Keller specified it for a new product called the ModaRack, which is, as best I can tell, a modular, stackable and highly configurable rack mounting system for A/V equipment, or anything else that’s a standard rack mount form factor. It still needs the rails, and Bandit will need to find another place to play, but it’s mostly done at this point.

Tumblr is all about ANIMATED GIFS. Yes, that’s right, so we just had to have Bandit - the official German Shepherd of Kontraptioneering, jumping THROUGH a freshly minted ModaRack, straight off the CNC router.

This is a sped-up version of the CNC router cutting the MODARACK logo in a piece of ColorCore plastic.

October 12, 2011

Hat tip to the 5,000th follower of the Kontraptionist Lab

5,000 of you. Wow. Some duds in there for sure.. but 5,000 is awesome. I will post some cool pictures of my robots tearing things to pieces to honor this occasion.

October 7, 2011
Finding the center of a hole on the CNC mill using a co-axial centering indicator. Yes, that’s an entire bicycle clamped to the machine.

Finding the center of a hole on the CNC mill using a co-axial centering indicator. Yes, that’s an entire bicycle clamped to the machine.

Somehow we keep end up making buckets here at the shop. This one is for artist Michael DeLucia. After it’s painted and finished, it’s heading over to Italy for a solo show in Turin along with a beautiful mountain of other artwork we’ve been making this past month or so.

Somehow we keep end up making buckets here at the shop. This one is for artist Michael DeLucia. After it’s painted and finished, it’s heading over to Italy for a solo show in Turin along with a beautiful mountain of other artwork we’ve been making this past month or so.

October 6, 2011
Take that tree! Maple tree chunk vs. solid tungsten carbide.  Tungsten carbide beats maple tree.  This was the day of fixturing weird stuff to CNC machines, in this case, the CNC router. Jon is turning this piece of tree in to some kind of cool trivet or something.

Take that tree!

Maple tree chunk vs. solid tungsten carbide.  Tungsten carbide beats maple tree.  This was the day of fixturing weird stuff to CNC machines, in this case, the CNC router. Jon is turning this piece of tree in to some kind of cool trivet or something.

There’s a bike clamped to the CNC milling machine… So far probably the most awkward workpiece we’ve ever had to clamp, but not so bad.  This is a prototype bike for the Social Bicycles (SoBi) bike share program. One of the holes for the locking mechanism needs to be opened up a bit, and this was the best way to do it… no, really!

There’s a bike clamped to the CNC milling machine… So far probably the most awkward workpiece we’ve ever had to clamp, but not so bad.  This is a prototype bike for the Social Bicycles (SoBi) bike share program. One of the holes for the locking mechanism needs to be opened up a bit, and this was the best way to do it… no, really!

October 4, 2011
The seemingly chaotic (but actually not) back side of the LED interactive museum piece that depicts a map of Haitian plantations that were torched by the rebel slaves during the revolution. There are a total of 77 different LEDs, all are fully dimmable 30-bit  (1.073 billion colors) capable and are based on the Allegro A6281 chip as featured in the popular “ShiftBrite” board. Assembly took about 3 hours, mostly because of all of the map locations that were REALLY close together, making it necessary to relocate the LEDs on extension wires away from their carrier boards  which were too big to clump together. This is my only beef with the ShiftBrites - They’re really big!

The seemingly chaotic (but actually not) back side of the LED interactive museum piece that depicts a map of Haitian plantations that were torched by the rebel slaves during the revolution. There are a total of 77 different LEDs, all are fully dimmable 30-bit  (1.073 billion colors) capable and are based on the Allegro A6281 chip as featured in the popular “ShiftBrite” board. Assembly took about 3 hours, mostly because of all of the map locations that were REALLY close together, making it necessary to relocate the LEDs on extension wires away from their carrier boards  which were too big to clump together. This is my only beef with the ShiftBrites - They’re really big!

Test firing LEDs on an interactive museum piece that depicts a map of Haitian plantations that were torched by the rebel slaves during the revolution. A piece of DuraTrans will be mounted over this, but for now this is just as cool. There are a total of 77 different LEDs, all are fully dimmable 30-bit  (1.073 billion color) capable and are based on the Allegro A6281 chip as featured in the popular “ShiftBrite” board. Unfortunately for my ego, the final museum piece will only use the red-orange palette, but until it goes up, I can still have fun with the programming.

Test firing LEDs on an interactive museum piece that depicts a map of Haitian plantations that were torched by the rebel slaves during the revolution. A piece of DuraTrans will be mounted over this, but for now this is just as cool. There are a total of 77 different LEDs, all are fully dimmable 30-bit  (1.073 billion color) capable and are based on the Allegro A6281 chip as featured in the popular “ShiftBrite” board. Unfortunately for my ego, the final museum piece will only use the red-orange palette, but until it goes up, I can still have fun with the programming.

October 3, 2011
Tomoka gets busy mounting one of many LED modules to a CNC cut sheet for an interactive museum piece that depicts a map of Haitian plantations that were torched by the rebel slaves during the revolution. There are a total of 77 different LEDs, all are fully dimmable 30-bit  (1.073 billion colors) capable and are based on the Allegro A6281 chip as featured in the popular “ShiftBrite” board.

Tomoka gets busy mounting one of many LED modules to a CNC cut sheet for an interactive museum piece that depicts a map of Haitian plantations that were torched by the rebel slaves during the revolution. There are a total of 77 different LEDs, all are fully dimmable 30-bit  (1.073 billion colors) capable and are based on the Allegro A6281 chip as featured in the popular “ShiftBrite” board.