Drummond Masterton
project_Terraincup
The project focused on the creation of a 3D product which combined a 1950’s Melaware designed coffee cup with a scaled version of the mountain Ben Nevis. The concept behind the piece was that consumers would be able to have a favourite terrain embedded into a standard product such as a coffee cup. The use of the product would reveal the landscape as the coffee was drunk similar to watching a cloud inversion from a hilltop.
The research mainly focused on technical aspects of how to translate 2D terrain data into 3D software and then towards manufacturing using CAM software and CNC devices. Further research is required to develop the interface which would enable consumers to choose and forward there landscape choices.
The stages of the project are documented in chronological order below:
Initially I tested a range of different scales for maps from the Digimap Carto service to establish the level of detail that would be required. It was established early on in the research project that 1:25000 provided a level of detail that was unworkable from a computing power perspective. 1:50000 scale provided enough contour detail to accurately describe the terrain.
The terrain data was imported to the 3D CAD software Auto.des.sys Form_Z in order to join the contour lines where any breaks between tile sets had occurred. The contours were positioned in the Z axis and then surfaced with a triangulated mesh of 3mm. The mesh size was defined through a series of tests to establish the smallest size that could be machined quickly while still revealing a high level of detail. This stage of the project was highly iterative because of the wide range of cutting tools and machining parameters that are available to choose from.
The cup and saucer were modelled in Autodesk’s 3D Studio Max and along with the terrain component were imported into Materliase’s Magics software. This was used to trim and fix errors in the STL files for each of the individual parts of the cup. Magics was also used to Boolean all the individual parts together to create one united surface model of the cup and terrain.
Test pieces of the cup and saucer were printed in 3Dusing a Zcorp Rapid Prototyping machine to test scale and interference fit between the parts. As a result of these tests the CAD data was edited to correct some errors in the fit between the terrain surface and cup surface which had not been noticed on the CAD model.
Picasoft’s Mayka software was used to generate the CNC cut file data, this required the use of both 4 and 3 axis milling to reach all parts of the intricate surface. The parts were milled from Aluminium Billet in a series of operations, excess material was quickly removed using a large slot cutter and then a number of fine cuts were performed to achieve the required surface finish. Due to the complexity of the surfaces and the number of different faces to be milled the total time for manufacturing the ‘Terraincup’ exceeded 60Hours.
‘Terraincup’ was exhibited throughout Europe from 2005 to 2006 in a Think Tank curated show, ‘Languages’.
projects
| :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> Patterning projects :> :> :> :> :> Star Tessellation :> :> :> :> :> Test Pieces :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> |
:> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> Terraincup :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> Cycleau-Cornwall :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> |
downloads & links
Think Tank website
Grade Repository Dataset
Digimap website
Digimap case study
Research Papers
team
Dr Katie Bunnell :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P
Dr Justin Marshall :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
Tavs Jorgensen {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:) {:)
Drummond Masterton :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :> :>
Adam Stringer ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;| ;|
Isabelle Risner ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o ;-o
_001 Digimap Carto contour data was edited to represent Z heights
_002 Materialise’s Magics software was used to combine the separate components into a unified design
_003 3D max render of cup with coffee
_004 3D max render of terrain being revealed as coffee is drunk
_005 The finished ‘Terraincup’ after CNC milling and hand polishing