Middle of April

It’s been a while since my last post, I’ve been a bit lost.

I lost the thread of what I was trying to achieve with my final year work and started to move away from my concepts and tried to produce finished pieces of work. I think it began when I won a Goldsmiths award, that meant I was going to have to produce a piece in precious metal when I hadn’t planned using any, this then shifted into the other pieces I was working on and before long I’d fallen into the ‘shiny pretty things’ for degree show mindset. I spent almost a week in the design studio and workshop surrounded by half finished pieces of silver work not really sure where they were going  and changing things about them as I worked.

After discussions with tutors I’ve ditched the silver pieces, apart from the Goldsmiths effort, and have gone back to concepts, rapid prototypes and renders.

There’s a little over 3 weeks ’til assessments, I’m waiting on Shapeways RP orders and have started to make up posters which show a graphical representation of my dissertation and EMA jewellery concepts.

Another post in the next couple of days about help from a company who have loaned me QR code reading equipment.

March Update

I’ve posted a couple of updates on the final year blog in the last few days, on the box brooch page and the RFID ring page. This week I’m waiting on some RP models of the RFID ring (image below) from Shapeways, silver from Cooksons and the cast box brooch from Niagara Falls, all should be here by Friday.

Box Brooch

I’ve finalised plans to have my first degree show piece cast this morning, it’s an updated version of the box brooch I submitted as my Goldsmiths entry and a .stl model has been sent to Niagara Falls casting company which should be ready early next week. There are changes to the rear of the brooch, and I’ve reduced the depth of it but the changes enhance the design. I now need to get a Cooksons order done so I can make the brooch rear plate and begin a couple of other pieces.

Renders and an update on the design will appear on the final year blog later today or tomorrow and photos of the piece will appear after assessments.

Update

I’ve been neglecting both of my blogs lately. While using Rhino I’ve come up against a problem I didn’t think I’d ever encounter, too much choice! I keep getting to a point with my RFID project where I think I’ve got a final design then I change my mind and move onto another. I’ve decided I want to produce a couple of RFID rings, one will display the technology overtly as part of the design and the other will hide the technology, mimicking a usable piece of EMA jewellery, however, I keep mixing and matching the two designs which is driving me a little nuts. I’ll have to make a decision soon to allow time for RP models.

Another reason for the blog neglect is I’ve been doing a bit of making. After a successful experiment laser engraving onto semi-precious stones I’ve developed a brooch design which incorporates QR code technology. This will be further developed into a degree show piece using precious metal so that’s another shiny piece of jewellery for the show I wasn’t planning on having. Development pictures may find their way onto my final year blog over the next couple of days but the final pieces wont be featured until after assessments.

Help – I need some suggestions for a hi-res webcam, 10MP would be good, if anyone can post or send me a link that would be appreciated

Last week and the next week or so…

So being successful in the Goldsmiths competition means I will be making at least one piece of jewellery from precious metal, which will be silver.

The box brooch from the previous post will be created in the very near future. Over the next few days I’ll have to make some alterations to the CAD model because I wasn’t happy with the hinge arrangement after I got the RP model model back, then I’ll get a wax 3D printed and then hopefully get the piece cast. In most cases it’s usual to get a mould made to create the wax from and allow multiple copies to be made, but because this is a one-off piece I can’t justfy (or afford) the cost of that.

Also last week I was in touch with a company which specialises in RFID technology, they’ve agreed to sponsor me by lending me the equipment I need to produce the interactive RFID concept. This is a major boost for me because without help like this It would be impossible for me to afford the technology, there will be (much) more on this later.

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Box Brooch RP model

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December Update

University is now, more or less, over for the year. Our final event, the xmas jewellery sale, finished yesterday and I think everyone sold some jewellery. I don’t know what the final total (in cash) will be but it was looking very healthy yesterday morning and sales were made right up until the close at 5pm yesterday. A big well done to all the jewellers for making a great success of it.

Over the xmas break I’m going to be putting together an application for the 2011/12 MDes program at Dundee and doing a personal statement in preparation for the visit of our exernal assessor which is at the end of January 2011. I also need to get started on work for assessments and the degree show.

In January I should find out if I’ve been lucky enough to get a Goldsmiths precious metal Bursary  award or not, the brooch design I used in my competition entry will be cast in silver if I get a bursary, otherwise, it’ll  be made in bronze. The image below shows an initial paper version of the brooch and a rapid prototype I had done, these  images were part of the Goldsmiths competition entry.

Coming up in January we also have a peer assessment day which will be part of our mid-term review so it’ll be a fairly intense month and I think we’ll all have to hit the ground running after the break. We were also told last week that the 17th of May is results day, with assessments on the 9th and 10th, that’s not enough time surely?

I wish you all a great winter break, see you next year :-)

November update

Quite a lot happening at the moment, still dissertation writing even though I’d hoped to be done by now. Main reason is I’ve been adding in some material that has come to light in the last few weeks and I’ve also been working on a design for the Goldsmiths Precious Metal Bursary competition.

I’ve also been giving serious thought to the degree show and what I’m actually going to show! I had always intended to show new designs for Emergency Medical Alert jewellery, however, because of the results of the dissertation research I decided to abandon that idea because it wasn’t practical to design jewellery that wouldn’t actually work as EMA jewellery. I moved on to thinking about designing some narrative jewellery which could carry information or objects related to a client while still trying to utilise technology and make the jewellery interactive. In the last few weeks I’ve been talking to people about this and my future (i.e. what’s happening after the degree show),  and I’ve decided to move back to creating EMA jewellery, but in a conceptual sense.

This then leads to the questions, if it’s a concept do I actually need to produce it? Can I produce it?  Or do I just have to produce the body of work looking at the concepts, research, models, prototypes, renders, animations? Time will tell but I feel at the moment that shiny pieces of precious metal jewellery will not be a feature of my show.

Opinions are welcome

Stepping into the Future – post 2

I really enjoyed the JISC organised event yesterday, there was a lot happening and it all happened very quickly but I got a lot out of it. The thing that got me going most was getting a look at a very cheap rapid prototyping system and some other tools that could be really useful in a jewellery studio environment, here’s a summary of the event.

First up was Alan Holligan who is a Lecturer at Telford College in Edinburgh. He spoke about VLE’s and their use, or not, as a learning aid. He covered reasons why students don’t engage with VLE’s and why few of them even use their College e-mail addresses. His solution was to create a VLE in the form of a blog which students can interact with, link to their social networking sites like Facebook, comment on posts etc. Basically I got the feeling that students prefer this to a rigid VLE because it’s much friendlier and engaging.

Alans talk was very interesting, as a student at Dundee University I think they’ve probably got it right as far as myDundee  goes, apart from maybe social networking integration, although at DoJ we also have the design studies blog as a virtual learning platfom, particularly in 2nd year.

Next up were two presentations on a theme, CAD/CAM. Firstly Martin Stevens from A1 Technologies gave a talk about A1′s low cost rapid prototyping solutions for use in an educational context although they’re equally suited to a personal studio context as well, have a look around their site.

The main feature, at least for me, was A1′s BfB 3D printer, supplied ready to go for around £2000. This is really cheap but it still produces great looking models. Even better is the RapMan 3D printer self build kit, this takes the price down to around £800. Other advantages of these machines are that the running costs are estimated to be around 10% of the cost of their nearest competitor and they can use a variety of compounds to make models. We saw a plastic polymer being demonstrated but it can also use a potato starch based compound, useful for lost wax casting because it’ll burn away in the mould.

The image above is the RapMan, a roll of the polymer printing medium can be seen in the bottom of the case. The fact that the frame of the machine is transparent also helps users engage with it because they can see what’s going on. The printer uses standard .stl files to produce models. The image below shows a variety of models.

A1 also had a laser scanning set-up on display. This allows small objects to be scanned and loaded as .stl files into the accompanying software. They can then be printed to give a copy or they can be imported into 3D CAD software and manipulated as required before being printed.

Next to speak was Ann-Marie Shillito from Anarkik3D Ltd. She spoke about her Cloud9 software and haptic input device, this is bundled by A1 for £495. I’ve seen and had a wee bit of a play with Cloud9 before, the DoJ jewellery department has a complete set up. It’s very easy to use with a clear uncluttered interface and I’m hoping to get some more time on it to experiment.

If you look at the prices it can be seen that a complete 3D design system, 3D scanner and Printer can be bought for around £2000 which is really impressive considering the quality and the pricing of their nearest competitors.

Next on the agenda were hands on workshops, there were 3 to choose from and I went with a QR code (a form of 2D barcode) workshop. It was really interesting and gave examples of the use of QR codes ‘in the wild’ as well as a little about their history. It’s clear that they do have uses in education as tools to engage pupils/students and can also, for instance, help provide easier access to information for people who may have learning difficulties.

I’m discussing QR codes in my dissertation and will also be using them in my degree show, both as a source of information and in/on jewellery and other pieces.

The next presentation was by Noel Lynagh and Mateusz Cyrankiewicz. They have developed a company and on-line service called Dropr. This is an on-line site for the creative industries that allows individuals and organisations to build portfolios. It does cost to join although a small personal portfolio will be free, however, it’s best point I think is that it allows organisations (such as Universities) to buy space to showcase students portfolios. It can also be developed into an on-line community with full integration into other social networking sites. It does look really interesting and is something I’ll be investigating in the future.

I’m going to stop now, this is a long post and if you made it this far well done!

4th Year

I’m looking forward to getting into the 3D media lab next week and starting to get some ideas for a first piece together. I’ll be doing some initial sketches over the weekend and then moving onto Rhino. I have an idea for a container in mind and will also have to get into the workshop and get some piercing and doming samples done.

I’m not sure if I’ll be posting any images of finished work this year, I want to keep anything I might be going to use in the degree show under wraps, I might post some workshop samples and a bit of development work though.

Some Rhino chat