I LOVE Polyester Primer!!

I love spraying our high build polyester primer! It flows so nicely out our HVLP gun. It is a 2-part primer, but the mix is pretty tolerant. The best thing about it though, is the fact that you can start sanding it in about half an hour! It's rock hard when it dries too. In fact, on these two guys, we had some small undercuts, that we're able to fill with just a clean clay, and we can spray right over it. The coating is hard enough (at the right thickness) that it won't break-out where the clay was used. I'm not talking HUGE holes, but small little ones. And clay is such an easy filler, that the whole process is super easy!

Is that Jody sanding again?!? Of course it is!! Poor girl! Actually, I'm not a total animal, I did help a little. I have noticed that the primer does seem to get harder to sand, the longer it sits, but we try to tackle it as soon as possible after it flashes off.

Originally, these were to be a patina bronze, with a marble base, but seconds before we were going to start the base coat, production called, and changed them to pristine copper. Phew........
The copper is a lacquer paint, which means we have to get the whole thing sprayed, pretty much in one shot. If the wet lacquer hits flashed lacquer, it goes dull and dusty looking. So to make things go super fast, both Jody and I sprayed each bust together. Her on one side, and me on the other!

After about 10 minutes, we masked off the copper, and sprayed the bases a bronze-ishy color. That took about an hour to dry before we could unmask them.

They looked quite serious sitting on the table, with no sense of humors between them! I kinda want to keep one of them for myself, but then again, it would probably end up sitting next to my 10 foot Spanish galleon in the garage!
8)
JWO

Just The Two of Us..................

My Techno and me, we're the best friends that could be............(sung as an 80's tv commercial)!
Both busts were cut from a single sheet of 2" HDU! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't toolpathed it myself! I thought for sure we would have been 1.25 sheets, but I totally lucked out on the layouts
The busts are actually mirror images of each other, facing slightly towards one another. I saved a lot of time by just slicing the one model, then mirroring every piece in Aspire.

The face, then the head were the first parts of the Techno, and I glued them up as I waited for the others to slowly churn out.

It took a full day for us to machine, and assemble the pieces into the two final busts. This also included addressing any of the seams that needed work as well!

The last piece left was the 2 bases that the busts would sit on. These were totally modeled in Aspire, using just the 2 rail sweep feature. Super fast, super easy!
I didn't want to have to miter the corners on the at all. So instead I cut the profile into the front and back pieces, and cut the sides as straight cuts.

In the end, it all came together with very little trouble! Plus, I didn't have to deal with mitering them on the saw!

We were pretty stoked about how they turned out! Now try squinting as you look at the bottom picture of Jody...........................................She looks like a mini me! HA HA.

  "Get in mah belly....Baby back, baby back, baby back ribs!

Just some primer and paint, and these guys will be good to go!!
8)
JWO

The Only Thing Better Than One Bust, Is Two!

An earlier project we were involved with was the fabrication of 2 busts. These were to be of the composer Bach.
And as per usual, we had about 4 days to do them in!
These are for an upcoming TV series, that I think is going to be pretty awesome! When we delivered them, I was blown away by the set work that was being constructed!
But that's as much as I can say about it, without getting in serious crap-ola!

Because of the short deadline, we had no choice but to search for available 3d models, which there was very little to choose from. Mostly scanned geometry, that was huge in file size, and not great in finish detail. In fact, most of the models were just texture mapped, with very little actual geometry!

But I did find a decent model bust of Bach, but hated it from the neck down, it was like the artist lost interest! So I also purchased a bust model of Beethoven, and Frankenstined both the models together.

I think the results came out pretty good!
The only issue with this sort of thing, is that you end up with a leaky mesh. I brought it into the free app Meshmixer, from Autodesk, and was able to fuse the head and torso into 1 watertight mesh.
If I didn't need to slice this model outside of Aspire, It wouldn't be an issue, as Aspire isn't really affected by non-watertight geometry.

 However STL Slicer is a little bit more picky, and a non watertight mesh can confuse it most of the time

However, I can't rave enough about STL slicer! It does it's job REALLY well! Although, I do have some suggestions for them, to improve it a bit, but it really has been a serious asset to us!

Once all the slices were aligned to the z-plane, I dropped them all into Aspire for machining.
I took the time to limit my toolpaths in the software, as opposed to wasting machining time on the output end.
Everything was roughed with a 1/2" ballnose, and finished off with a 1/4" ballnose. I didn't double side machine any of the parts for this, most of them didn't need it. And anything that did, was faster to carve out by hand!
8)
JWO