Making spirals

I continued to test the acrylic by making models that were more alike to what I wanted my final model to look like. Although for my actual model I will be cutting out a spiral and then pulling it out, I have only done tests using strips of acrylic at this stage because cutting the acrylic with a jigsaw has proved rather difficult. 

This was just achieved by heating up parts of the rod and twisting it around a cylinder. I like that it bears qualities of a tornado. 

I twisted this model freehand. I like that it tapers of towards the end and that the final piece is not twisted but pointing straight down. However I have realised that when heating acrylic with a blow gun it is better to leave the paper on because otherwise it starts turning black like this one. 

More heating tests

Again I heated the acrylic with a blow torch to test the boundaries of how far it could be twisted.

This was the first test trying to twist a 1cm strip. The reason it snapped was because I tried heating the entire rod and then twisting it all in one go however by the time i had heated the whole rod enough to bend part of it had cooled down and so by twisting it, it snapped.

I rectified this problem by only heating parts of the rod at a time and then twisting it. Although it was hard to get even it didn't matter if I made a mistake because it can just be reheated and then shaped again. 

Acrylic tests

This is my first bending test which was done with a blow torch. The acrylic was a lot easier to bend then i thought it would be as when it is heated it turns soft and can be moulded into basically anything. 

Paper mock up

Now that I know roughly what I am trying to achieve I am just making a paper mock up to show roughly how it will look. 

As you can see it is a very rough sketch of how the spiral will look. 

This is the spiral cut out and pulled out. I like the aesthetics of this however it does need to have another twirl in order to look more alike to my hero model. I now plan to investigate how much 2mm acrylic can be bent which will determine whether this is an achievable model. 

Initial sketches/brainstorming

Initially when trying to work out how to replicate my hero model into a physical model I was a little lost as I was unsure of the properties of acrylic and didn't know whether I would be able to bend it to the degree that I needed. However these were the first very basic sketches of my ideas.

This was just the simple shape that I wanted to make. But in order for it to look as chaotic as possible I want to make more than one and somehow attach them to get the whirling look. 

This is a rough sketch of how I would like to make my model. Basically it is 2 tornado like figures that are twisted around each other. These are held together by 2 rods running along the length of them. 

Precedents

Retrieved from: http://www.rachelmcknight.com/product_specific.aspx?title=Bangles&id=&dataid=504993 

This is my first precedent image of a laser cutting which is just a laser cutting of a strip which has then been heated and twisted around. Due to the shape of my model this image jumped out at me because of the curves which I have had trouble with. 

Retrieved from: http://www.axon.com.au/wood/bowls/archimedes2/index.html 

This precedent of a spiral laser cutting caught my eye as it is a similar shape to my hero model and gave me the inspiration for how I was going to make my final model. Like this image I will be laser cutting spirals and then heating them so that they drop down to form tornado-'esque' shapes. 

DSDN 104-Project 2

We are now beginning project 2 for Digital Creation where we have been asked to make a model based on our hero image from project 1. 

This is my hero model which I have to make a physical model of using laser cutting processes. We were told to slice up our models in 3ds max, export them to Adobe Illustrator and make a model using the stacking method. Because of the twisting nature of my model this method was not relevant to me as it could not be down. At this stage when everyone else was creating stacked models I had trouble working out how I was going to create a model with so much twisting but after talking to tutors I realised that when heated, 2mm acrylic is malleable meaning I could make spirals and pull them out to form tornado like patterns such as this one.