Tutorial + Reflection

Tutorial




This tutorial will provide a method for shrinking aluminium sheet into a sculpture form.





Facts about aluminium:

- A range of sheets size
- Lightweight
- Electrical and Thermal Conductivity
- Recyclable 







Laser cut
























Laser cut machine can provide a high quality and precise cutting technique, the machine can cut on a variety of materials such as plywood, acrylic, and metal.... Simply open the document that you want to print on the computer software and select the material that you are going to print on and click start, the machine will then run itself.


Set up

  X 2   

X 4

After laser cutting the artwork on the plywood panels, place an aluminium sheet between the two boards and screw them together on each of the corners on the plywood.


Simple tools and equipment

 

The above images refer to the two main tools that are used in this task, they are the Flat Ends mallet (on the Left) and the Radius Ends mallet (on the Right).



Create a water drop shape in a smooth skin




         

Steps of hand shrinking a water drop shape on a aluminium sheet:

1. Place a radius ends mallet on top of the aluminium sheet
2. Hammer the radius mallet by using a flat ends mallet
3. Keep hammering until the form appears

Tips: Find a mallet/ tool that has a similar shape to the piece of work that you want to shrink

This method can avoid leaving marks on the skin of the aluminium and help to smoothen the surface.

Detail surface

Steps to shrink the small area of this model:

1. Create a sharp and tiny wooden stick that can fit on the top of the water drop shape
2. Adjust the stick at different angles to fit with the model
3. Hammer the aluminium with the stick 

Using a small steel hammer can simply shrink the small angle, however, marks will be created.


Final piece














Reflection

This course has given me an unexpected experience, I never thought I would know the skills of shrinking an aluminium sheet into an art piece that can be used in the interior. This course has also encouraged me to think outside the box, taught me how to create an interior fixture by shrinking an aluminium sheet. It is a really interesting course!


  Architecture in water drop form 

  A water drop exterior sculpture 

  My aluminium water drop art piece

 Water drop interior decorations

 Water drop lights for interior

A range of architecture to interior fixture to emphasise the water drop shape.

The Ferrari 250 gto.

The initial steps of this task were to scale down the Ferrari in a software called '123D' and to laser cut the layers of the model for assemble. Few issues that me and my group faced while laser cutting were that the plywood sheets were not placed properly under the laser cutter and they were not cut through in the machine. In return, our group took longer than usual to get all the panels cut.


                             

Meanwhile, it bacame difficult to assemble the model when more plywood panels were put together, creating friction among layers. To fit all the pieces of plywood in shape, my groupmates and I used a flat end mallet to push all the layers down.

Similar to pervious tasks, we divided the model into parts, put the masking tape on the model, then cut the aluminium sheets into different specific shapes for hammer.

Things to be improved:
1. Do a laser cut test to check whether the plywood pieces is too close to each other to avoid spending extra time to assemble.
2. Make sure the width of each gap in the panels is wide enough to assemble.


                                  

For the first 30 mintues to an hour I was struggling to hammer the shape of the part that I was involved in. I began to hammer from the rear which was positioned in the center area of my piece of aluminium sheet. However, the top side sat apart from the model when the bottom part fit perfectly, creating a 5cm gap between the aluminium sheet and the model as shown in the above left image. 

To fix this, I tried to hammer the window area (top part of the aluminium) to push it inward. Yet, the shape of the rear and the front part became flatten, resulting a bulky aluminium shape. 



                       

By hammering the side of the model on the edge of the desk, it helps to form a line to indicate the door of the Ferrari. While for the rear, I hammered the aluminium on a curve edged plywood to create a round shape.

Things to be improved:
1. Hammer the aluminium sheet with a wooden stick to advoid less damage on the surface.
2. Divide the piece into two separate parts to make it easier to hammer.



                  
Images of the polished Ferrari model.

Week 5

The Blister

From the bowl, to the torus, and then the tray, I have leant different skills in each task. In shaping the blister, the radius and flat end mallet are two of the tools that I mainly used.  The key difference between this and the pervious tasks is that we need to apply two plywood pieces on both sides of the aluminium sheet as to support the shape while shrinking.

By hitting a flat end mallet to the radius end mallet, it helps to shrink a nice and fine surface. However, as the width is getting closer to each other at the end of the blister, I could hardly place the mallet on the aluminium sheet. At the end, I figured that I could use a sharp plywood block to reach the end of the aluminium piece. As the surface is smaller, it is much harder to shrink.

Here are some images and a video of my finished blister. Overall, I think this is the most satisfy piece among all of the aluminium shape that I shrinked over the past few weeks. As the more I practice, the more techniques I get to learn and less mistakes to be made.

Match with partner's work:

Critical thinking- When looking at the section of this aluminium blister, I can only think of an avocado. Duplicating the blister I immediately recalled that it could be an installation of an interior space. Here is a section of that:

Week 4

The Tray

As we now have more experiences in shaping aluminium sheets, we were expected to produce a fine and smooth finish. The aim of this task was to produce a tray with around 10 millimeter edges on each side.

                  

The above images show two of the tools that I mostly used in hammering the tray, they are the metal cutting tin snips on the left image and the ball-peen hammer on the right image.

To avoid creating stretch marks on the aluminium, I placed a timber block on each side of the sheet to prevent the aluminium piece from being directly hit by the ball-peen hammer. Using the round shape die helps forming round edges around the aluminium piece as shown in the above images.

Here is an image of my finished aluminium tray:

Match with partner's work:

Critical thinking- This aluminium piece can simply be used as a tray for baking, delivering food, storing accessories etc. However, what if I scale up the tray to a 1:1 scale table top?