Concept: Brainstorming an idea for the waffle construction project took me some time. I knew what I wanted to make but I didn't know how to create exaggerated details for my initial design. I wanted to create something that had inspiration from wrestling and seeing as though Halloween was right around the corner, I felt like a wooden Jack O Lantern would be the perfect fir for this project. Unfortunately I was going to lose a lot of facial details with the waffle slicing and lack of post processing so I had to think of a different design. Initially I was sad and that led me to wanting to create a tear drop in the form of a Jack o Lantern. I was going to create it from glass and place a light inside, however this design was being utilized, with nowhere to turn I go back to my initial idea of creating a design that was influenced by wrestling. With the idea of Jack o Lantern, tear, and spooky in my mind I combined elements from all previous designs to finalize on an eye. The eye would be a wooden eye lid cage that would hold a glass eye inside where you can place a candle. My favorite saying for passion, or heart is, "You can see the fire in their eyes." and with this in mind, I wanted to show my passion.
Technique: I created my file in Rhino and to begin, I made the eyelids. By using the Paraboloid tool I was able to make a semi oval that I could scale to any size of my choosing. Once I got the Paraboloid to look right, I copied it and pasted the object, rotating it 180 degrees so it closes the open half of the original paraboloid. In order to achieve a whole for the eye to look out of, I made a ellipsoid and scaled it big enough to create a whole for the eye to look out of. With the two objects selected I Boolean differenced them and achieved an eye lid model I was looking for. To create the eye I took a sphere and scaled it so it could fit into the eye lid comfortably. I used another paraboloid to create an interior for the eye where the candle could sit. The paraboloid didn't give me the base I wanted so I went back and created a cube to Boolean difference and achieve a surface for the candle to rest on. In order to keep the eye from moving, I wanted to create a plug-in for the eye to sit in and be sturdy. To do this I created a cylinder and pasted the same cylinder when I got the dimensions correct. I then took the first cylinder and Boolean diffused it with the interior bottom surface of the eye lid in order to create negative space for the eye to slide in. I then Boolean unionid the other replica cylinder to the eye to ensure the eye would fit into the negative space. I also ended up having to create my own notches for the project because my model wasn't perfectly symmetrically. In order to do so I had to contour my eye and eye lid separately, and generate intersections to determine where pipes should be laid. Once I had my intersections I had to generate the pipe with the thickness of the material I was using, in the tutorial videos Andrew Scott tells us to set the pipe to radius when generating your notches manually, however it is diameter, because radius would give you twice the gap. Once the pipes were laid out, I split my contour surfaces with the pipes to generate my half lap notches. from there you delete the notches and lay the surfaces flat as you get them prepped for laser cutting.
Materials: In Keyshot I wanted to replicate the wooden eye lid cage I had envisioned for my project. To do so, I went to the Keyshot library and utilized one of their premade wood materials. I wasn't a fan of its darkness so I went to the settings and adjusted the color to something brighter and similar to what I had bought. The glass material for the eye was given some minor scratchings to make it resemble the Home Depot quality I had bought. I added a cylinder to lay on top of one of the eye's surfaces to resemble the candle light that would be resting in the eye. In order to get lighting close to fire, I used an area light and flipped it to direct the light up. It is on top of the cylinder and brightens up the wood from the inside. Originally the wood and glass didnt bounce the light like I would like, so I went in and made the glass more reflective and the wood barely lighter. The light color is a mix of red, orange and yellow to resemble fire.
Unfortunately the notches on my laser cuts came out incorrect and my waffle structure struggled to stand on its own without the assistance of glue or external forces.
Update: I changed some of the contours and sections on the eyelid and the eye itself so I went back into rhino and used the pipe method in order to manually cut my ribs for the corrected surfaces. Once my surfaces had the correct size notches I was ready to lay them out for lasering. Unfortunately due to cost of materials I wasn't able to construct the eye out of the intended acrylic glass and had to resort to birch plywood. The laser layout changed from 48x24 to 24x20 due to the need to use a different laser bed than the one originally intended. Once my materials were cut I took the pieces and assembled them layer by layer. The building process was not as challenging as I thought it would be for the vessel, however the eye lid did have a few places that needed some reinforcement from the loctite. The above images demonstrate the process went to prepare the vessel for laser cutting and the renderings are revised to show the new notches and surfaces made to the design.
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