This is what our house looks like after we receive a shipment of radial necklaces. Each necklace is laser cut from wool felt covered in masking tape, leaving us with hundreds of cellular tape cutouts that take on a life of their own as a sticky aggregate.
We spent part of last week in Boston visiting with friends. While there, we had a chance to create some prototypes for our new wool felt necklaces. We needed to check the design for fit and sizing before sending it to be manufactured. We picked up some 3mm wool felt from the lovely Filzfelt in South Boston and hopped on some laser cutters in Cambridge.
These are the two designs we made, each will be available in pink, orange, grey and black
Due to all of your votes, we won the Ponoko’s 10-day design challenge back in August. The prize was $1000 dollars among other things. You can read about it here: 10-day design challenge: Jewelry for Summer winners announced
Thanks everyone!
Our fan/pendant design is a finalist in the ponoko summer jewelry competition! It is number#14, transient cool. Please vote for us. If we win, we will offer the piece for sale.
here is the link for voting, be sure to fill out the poll at the bottom of the page
We just entered another Ponoko competition with this fan/pendant. It was another jewelry competition, this time with the theme of summer. Working off that theme, we decided to create a pendant that transforms into a fan. A pattern is cut out of the fan which transforms on each layer, creating a moving 3D pattern when the fan is closed. This pattern is in fact a radiolaria pattern, where we have taken snap shots at regular intervals as the pattern morphs. The hexagons of the resulting patterns were divided into triangles.
The outer profile of the blade also transforms slightly creating a topographic surface when the fan is closed and a nautilus shell effect when open. The shadow looks almost like a ferris wheel, and the individual blades remind us of electrical towers. We find all of these images very summery, and I hope other people do as well. Below you can see a detail of the closed fan.
Last month we entered several designs in Ponoko‘s first design competition. Ponoko is a company based in New Zealand and San Francisco that will laser cut your designs for you. They have a simple template which you can use with several different 2D design programs (illustrator, freehand, and inkscape). Right now they are pretty limited in materials but they plan on adding some flexible ones soon.
From the entries, they selected 25 designs including 3 of ours and made them for free. From the top 25, they chose the top 10 and gave everyone $300. Check it out: here. Both the radiolaria bracelet (in PETG plastic) and the orchid necklace (in polystyrene) were selected.
To celebrate we are offering the orchid necklace for sale on etsy click here to buy one.
Here are some sketches for a table we’ve been working on for the past few days.
The basic idea behind it is to create a flat-pak, lasercut table composed of a complex, 3 dimensional branching structure that supports several lily pad-like plexiglass surfaces. One of the main issues we faced at first was how to join the flat pieces 3-dimensionally. At first we considered a system of notches but results seemed too messy and not very structural. Instead, we developed a system of joints and members in Digital Project. To enable us to make smooth transitions between members at any angle we are using three layers of material per piece which will be connected with pegs. Each joint is either a Y or an L shaped piece which interlocks with the members to create a strong and smooth connection.
Here are three examples of tables you can create with our joint system.
We decided to build a somewhat smaller table though as a test of concept to check out tolerances and the structural capabilities of the system. Here is a screenshot from CATIA showing the mini table we are having made:
Our new friends Ponoko are providing the laser services for us to produce this table. We entered their jewelry competition last month and are anxiously waiting to hear the results. Jesse will also be contributing to their blog in the future.
Here is a shot of the super cute cut file export Jesse made from CATIA:
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