New project

[chunkolini]

I have just been asked to make a dome structure as a memorial to my customer's wife, he was inspired by work on Diatoms etc, the finished work is to be around 4m in diameter.
Exciting stuff as I have been after making a huge one of these for ages.
Here are a couple of images of the maquette I made today scale 1/10 using 3mm gas welding rods.



And an image of the stuff that set me off on my plankton obsession.

Drawn by Eric Haeckel, amazing things.

They even look just the same in scanning electron photographs.
There is also a bit of Santiago Calatrava's architecture in there.

Chunko'.

 

[wyn]

Interesting shape....sort of desert tent type of thing.

 

[mike os]

nice one dude

 

[joss]

wow mate thats sweet i hope one day to be that good

 

[pedrobedro]

What kind of pipe are you using for the finished item chunko ? It would look good with some climbing plants growing over it like a gazebo type structure.

 

[chunkolini]

Cheers guys.
It is going to have uprights made of strip rolled into the curves, two pieces for each upright bolted together with a ring round the top,like the poles on a tent. The rest of it will be made of maybe 12mm round bar, maybe rebar, see forthcoming post re bending rebar. There will be some infill in bars over the spaces in the frame for as Pedro suggests plants to climb over. These are going to go across the 'surfaces' as concave curves, with the straight uprights being the breakup points hard to describe, bloody impossible to draw, surprisingly easy to make. All the curves are exactly the same which will help in the rolling process.

From the 1/10 model I think the six sections will just about fit through my door. I plan on building it in one piece bolted together then dismantling it for transport. I will of course try t remember to make one section spot welded up and try it on the door. I promise to be honest if I balls it up.

making the maquette was good fun, I might do more on this scale, Mig welding tinybars is easier than it looks, keep the power up is the key, and lots of small burns.

Chunko'.

These are the jobs that make it worthwhile, he has a passion and feeling about it, that always get the best out of me. Much more satisfying than people who buy sculpture by the yard.

 

[badersbus]

Sweeeeet uber cool as usual chunko
"lots of small burns ", i take it this is to the welding rod and not the hands , i seem to get both LOL
Looking forward to progress

 

[Hitch]

That second pic looks big already!
Looks an interesting shape Chunko, shapes like that are easy...unless you have specific measurements to work too

 

[chunkolini]

Its massive, like 400mm diameter.
The full size version, if we go ahead will be 4m.
Specific mesaurements, what are they? It would be a gruseome job if it was 'engineered'.
I am lucky that I can get away with making it look right. I measure up the first set of components carefully, set them up and then work from there, as long as it keeps on looking 'right' it is right. Say fitting the bars in that will represent the skin, if there are 12 of them I divide it into 4 and then divide those gaps up and fill them in. CAD design? I have thought about it, but nah.

Chunko'.

 

[mike os]

Engineer it & it would probably not work... it's art & does not comply with such mundane theories.