Hi, my first attempt at sculpting something. A lot harder than I originally expected - it was originally intended to be much more detailed and life-like, but trying to model the feet changed all that. I think a stylised representation is much better...ahem. My idea was to make it in ceramic, I had the minimum wall thicknesses in mind and the max bounding box etc, but did not read the max thickness part. My mistake. Anyway, I hollowed it out, put some drainage holes in and had it printed out in pwsf. I am very happy with the result, and hope my wife (who I modelled it for) will like it too. Will try to get a better picture asap.
Thank you, really. I don't know if you read the blurb I wrote or not but I based it on a Great Blue because it had a pose I liked. Praise indeed!
Ah, I did not. They are very common in our area, and there are lots of wood carvings around that resemble your model. At the office building where my mom used to work, they had a taxidermy one with a fish in it's mouth. Very elegant creatures, with terrible voice boxes lol.
I think the stylised heron is MUCH better than a realistic representation - which would be very difficult to do in ceramic due to lack of detail available. I've done a few "sculptures" myself and feel that ceramic is ideal for this type of work. My latest one is HERE if you're interested. Glenn
Very nice, Glenn. So no part of your structure is more than 15mm thick? I'm assuming it's not hollow. Do you think my Heron would print in Ceramic? Apart from the thickness issue, I wasn't sure that the legs would support the body, especially with the torque/moment of the beak.
While I haven't measured the heads I don't think that would be an issue - just as wall THINness doesn't seem to be an issue with RINGS printed in s/steel I believe that an almost spherical object with a maximum thickness of 15mm+ wouldn't cause any problems in ceramic. No, my model is not hollow - which is correct for printing in ceramic; it works out cheaper that way. In fact it is the cheapest material to print most models in. You're right in that the leg and beak may be an issue for printing in ceramic, depending on size. You could always run it by Shapeways before actually ordering it. All being well, I would definitely recommend it. Glenn
One of my failed attempts to get this made was rejected for: Didn't make sense to me but I had other issues as well... I know about the area thing, which is why initially I wanted to print this in ceramic. Having said that I think it should be an option to print in hollow ceramic and not have to pay for the inside to be glazed, especially as it is most probably not technically feasible so to do. Good idea, I will do that.
Yes, in the case of the Heron there would likely have been large expanses of which (the body) that would be thicker than 15mm. Often it is just not practical to hollow out since then the walls become too thin!