Tellurion Pendant Arrived in Metal

Ok, I think I'm ready to release this piece, finally. I'm really happy with how it has turned out in metal. The fact that it's actually stable in metal, and not so stable in WSF is really cool. In The WSF versions, I have always had to "fix" them with mighty putty to make the earth ball fit and not keep falling out. With the metal, it stays in securely, but rotating freely. There is no fear of it falling out.

As a result, I've retricted the materials to unpolished metal in the event that the polishing wears down the pointy pieces that need to fit.



I'm excited that I was able to scale it down to make a smaller more affordable version. There are pluses and minuses about the two sizes and two materials. But I think it's nice to have a choice.

Check out the video on the project page if you want to see it in motion, but forgive my video skills

product page: https://www.shapeways.com/model/136494/larger_metal_tellurion .html

-Whystler

Very Nice work Whystler.

Have you ever looked into trying your hand/CAD at Automata?

http://bit.ly/a2fRsI

I can so see your work flirting in this direction...

I do love automata, but never thought about that idea with regards to shapeways. Very interesting - and inspiring! Thanks for bringing it up!

-Whystler

I've thought about it as well, but to keep it simple and not require too much assemble would be tricky.

Here's a neat picture showing three tellurions. As you can see there is the smaller gold plated one, and the larger stainless steel one in in the middle. I also had another large stainless steel one from a previous order and decided to try something fun.

I did some research on "heat colouring". You can find out what I learned about creating goldy, bronzey, coppery, and blue colours in in a long post with many pictures in the post-production forum here:

https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=3059&a mp;start=0&S=66cf1a686f2ea56e0b17facb211f4988

But for this one, you'll see that I really brought out a goldish bronze colouration in the right-most tellurion in the picture. I did this by putting it in the oven for a while on high heat (500 degrees F). This looks a lot more goldish in real life, I think, than it showed in the picture and is a nice contrast to the coppery bronze finished, and the gold plated finishes available through Shapeways.

-Whystler

Postassembled moving parts in metal, yay.
Thats a thing I must try too sometime.
Some hints what to look at when designing?

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I now this heat coloring colors from the process of hardening steel.
When cooling down a color spectrum is wandering over the piece and gives you information
on how hard and brittle it will become when quenched.

I remembered this colors looking even brighter so
I searched and found an excellent picture here:
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php?topic=61530.0

The actual color depends on the thickness of the oxid layer
(double reflection light interference effect)

I am supprised that the way lower temperatures in a conventional baking oven (500°F = 260°C)
are sufficent to create a heat patina.

The big pro is that it won't make the part brittle but I'am not sure wether all the colours are reachable with this way lower temperatures.
A soldering hot air gun ~300°C might be the right tool to speed it up a bit more without the need of quenching.

That picture looks absolutely stunning, Lukas. Unfortunately, that was done with titanium, so I'm assuming you wouldn't necessarily get the same range of colours from SW's Stainless.

Love your home-made bronze, though, Whystler!

Andy

The question in this forum is about a titan yoyo
but the picture is actually really polished stainless steel.
Look on the producer page:
http://www.typeoneracing.com/catalog/home.php
>>The system is made out of 70mm full stainless piping with 1.2mm thickness<<

Epic piece of work Whystler! The colouring is really interesting too - I didn't think most ovens would go high enough to colour the ss.

sandy noble