Prototyping: Glass finish shows stress bulges and asymmetric definition of the circles - important to test your design against materials as this looks perfect in silver
Prototyping: Glass materials don’t execute the design as well as silver (heart motif)
transparent plastic sounds good in theory, but in reality it’s quite difficult to photograph and needs strong type design to work in the material
First material samples: ‘drop of alcohol’ pendant in red felxible plastic. It’s robust, nice colour, has a grainy texture that works well. Will post more detail shots later but too excited not to bang this one up
Day #4 - why prototyping is important
The process of working up these coat hangers has illustrated an interesting issue for 3D prototyping - making practical choices about the design process based on real world issues. The logo idea ‘up’ for example, doesn’t work unless the hole in the ‘p’ (or the ‘counter-space’ as it’s called in typography) has a support - like you used to see in old cut out Letraset templates. So that means re-working the logo to match the contraints (which mean about 2mm is the smallest support you can print reliably). It also means fixing small supports to be between 2-5mm to give them a chance of being robust, this also affects the overall dimensions for creating 3D type etc.
I’ve gone for a 15mm thickness for the coat hanger frame - with a 45mm width across the whole hanger so it’s wide enough to fill everything. It might be too big and hefty in reality, but that’s why real world testing is so important.
Images will post later once I’ve sent them off for printing…
Unique Platstique is the work of designer and tech geek Andrew Walker as he tries to get into 3D printing products. I'm interested in creating typographic art, jewellery... the sky's the limit. This is my product development blog. You can buy my stuff here at our new 