Developing “Undeveloped”

Making “Undeveloped” – a recent 3D printed artist book – required a bunch of experiments and changes. I can usually see some of the problems and some of the ways I can improve the piece in the digital stages, during the CAD design in Tinkercad or in the slicing in Simplify3D. But sometimes when the sculpture becomes a hard physical real thing it is wrong, wrong, wrong, and its time to sort out how to make it right. Sometimes I know there might be problems so I’ll print parts just for testing.

_MG_2265 — I tried a number of different designs for the sliding cover for the box of Undeveloped.

The box for Undeveloped takes about 12 hours to print just the main part. To make sure the box and sliding lid fit together properly I printed a small section of the box and the complete cover. If it wasn’t going to work I didn’t want to waste 12 hours and a bunch of filament to find out. I used Tinkercad to cut a section of the main box.

_MG_2266 — I had to make sure the cover fit in the groove of the box

I used any old color of PLA for the tests…. whatever was already in the printer if I had enough.

_MG_2258 — I used yellow PLA resin for the box to reference Kodak, but it looked strange. I ended up adding the silver patina to the outside. That looked right.

Plus, the yellow PLA wasn’t Kodak yellow. Because I buy PLA from the internet you never know what the actual color is until you open the box.

_MG_2259 — I made the exterior silver but kept the interior yellow. The orange is masking tape to keep the silver from getting on the inside.

_MG_2260 — The silver patina comes from Rub-N-Buff, available at craft stores. It is a wax.

rub-n-buff comes in a variety of metallic finishes.

_MG_2263 — Wear gloves when applying the Rub-N-Buff with your fingers.

If you don’t wear gloves you’ll end up with hands like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.

The finished product:

“Undeveloped” is part of my Gutenberg series of 3D printed artist books/