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Current Projects
The Completed Herman Miller Project
My project, Integrated Workstation, which resulted from the Cranbrook and Herman Miller partnership, is ready to be seen. See it in person at ICFF booth #1170.
Clip Tree Press Information
Press Information for Clip Tree's premier at ICFF 2012. Stop by booth #968 to see it in person!
Quill Light Version 2
The latest Quill Light prototype is complete. To turn the light on, simply lean the stem forward. To turn it off, lean it back, facing away from the task area.
Mirror Hooks
Mirror Hooks with chromed aluminum and White Oak or Walnut are now ready to received coats and hats.
Orbit Light
The Orbit Light features an 'orbiting' switch that turns the light on and off as it is rotated clock-wise or counter-clockwise around its glass dome.
3
Jeff sent to me an image from his cell this morning that shows (albeit in a blurry way) the light pieces together- they are just stacked, not physically connected…
So with Plan ‘B’ in full swing (the RP model will take 8 hours to print and will start tomorrow morning), the worry is gone about the outcome of the light, which is good considering the current state of things. The digital trace in the porcelain side of the design is gone now. The plaster mold did not release well from the wood mold that I had made. All molds at this point have been damaged, modified, broken and discarded. This leaves…throwing the shapes by hand. Yes, arguably the way to go from the get go. When I stopped by Jeff’s studio yesterday, he had already thrown them, so that no time is lost. What may result might be interesting. One of the early ideas that I had had was to make the diffuser out of 2 pieces and have them held together by the lighting hardware. This looks to be what will happen here. Presumably with the aid of a caliper, the radii of the thrown pieces were measured and will line up nicely when held together.
So with that obstacle out of the way, the next thing is getting the pieces fired. The kilns that Jeff has used before are all booked. He assured me that he has some other connections for getting them fired in our tight time frame. More on that when the time comes.
Ouch!
The Horror!
4 pieces of hope
Additional expenses, so obvious that I forgot to add them:
Fabrication of Table Base: $150
Power Coating Base: $85
New total: $1235.87
Only $264.13 left…
So I finally was able to get together with Jeff on Monday to begin Operation Last Minute Light. The mold, as it was, proved to be not quite right for our needs. The male/female approach was problematic because 1) it was hard on the porcelain (causing some cracking) and 2) popping the porcelain out of the female section was impossible to do without screwing up the shape. So after some experimentation with cutting the mold up and applying the porcelain sheets in various way, it was determined that a plaster mold should be made of the male part and we could cover it with porcelain. Plaster is an ideal surface as it absorbs much of the water from the porcelain allowing it to pull away cleanly and quickly. I am stopping by the studio again tomorrow to help out with the next round.
Apparently it takes six days of kiln firing and drying to get the piece to harden correctly. If we can hold to a perfectly executed schedule, then the lights will be completed a day before the show needs to go up.
Apparently it takes six days of kiln firing and drying to get the piece to harden correctly. If we can hold to a perfectly executed schedule, then the lights will be completed a day before the show needs to go up.
Here is Jeff’s plan from an email: My plan is to try and have three diffusers finished and drying by Saturday. Trying to kiln dry them on Sunday firing Monday pulling them out on Tuesday night. Glazing and throwing them back in a kiln late Wednesday. Pulling them out on late Friday or early Saturday for you to have a day to make it work with the fixture.
Slumping the porcelain over the male mold piece
Trimming away the excess
Male meet female
The ends of the female mold were cut off in order to try and press a larger porcelain slab and allow the excess to squeeze out of the sides.
Being the seasoned pessimist that I am, I have a Plan ‘B’ which I am starting concurrently to guarantee that a completed light is hanging in the show. MCAD has another Rapid Prototype machine that uses gypsum and sugar water to build models. It is pricey ($160 for a completed model) but will share a closer aesthetic quality with porcelain and is more eco-friendly than the plastic RP (and is cheaper than the RP which would have cost more than $200). So one way or another, a light will be hanging in the show!
Adding costs to the previous total for this project:
Previous total (as of Oct 22):
Total expenditure to date:
• 3-Form panel $178 ($125 for the panel + taxes and shipping)
• Porcelain and stains $176
• Biofiber Wheat $90 + tax
• MDF board for mold $31
• 12′ Cold Rolled Steel bar $49
• RP chair model $89
Total: $613
Recent additions:
Hardware from McMaster Carr $26.92
Hardware from McMaster Carr $22.17
Hardware from McMaster Carr $29.73
Pine Particle board for model $24
1/2 Straight Carbide bit for CNC Router $25.05
Drawer fabircation for desk $100
Gypsum RP part $160
New total: $1000.87
$499.13 left to blow!
I finished cutting out the pieces to the chair this past week. The BioFiber Wheat board machines well. There was hardly any chip-out of the material and the finish passes with the CNC made the surfaces fairly smooth. It smelled like a loaf of bread in the CNC room, which was a nice change. 
Cutting out the pieces was more complicated than other things I had cut out before because holes need to be drilled precisely and the pieces need to be planed smoothly. Ultimately it took 4 separate tool paths for the CNC to do it right (compared to a typical 2, I had 1 for the holes, 2 rough passes- 1 to cut out contours and the other to roughly plane the surfaces and then 1 finish pass to make everything smooth).
After the pieces were cut, assembly was straight-forward. The seat back had to be glued to the armrests and the cross brace pieces need to have the tenons chiseled out by hand because the CNC can only cut from one direction on the Z-axis (top to bottom). All of the edges were sanded, the handle opening in the seat bottom needed to be cut out using a drill, chisel and round file. And then the hardware was added and everything was put together. I then added the magnets. They did not work quite as well as I had hoped. Instead of arresting motion or making the legs come together tightly, there is more of a slight pull. I would need stronger magnets to get it work better. I had erred on the side of caution because I would rather have them be too weak than too strong.
The drawer for the desk is being made this week. It will be made out of Maple and will have Dovetail Joints. They will be ‘Through’ Dovetail Joints so that the front of the drawers hints at its construction. A guy named Patrick McMahon is making it for me. He is a busy guy and I appreciate him taking the time to do it. He said it would take him about 2 hours. I am paying him $100 (which I am sure is below what he would typically charge). Once it is done, I will stain it a very dark brown or ebonize it- not quite sure yet.
Jeff Haddorf and I will finally be getting together Monday to begin the light. I am hopeful that we will be able to produce something nice in the next 2 weeks…
I received my gallery space assignment this past week. My work will be the first thing you see as you walk in the main gallery! I am really excited about this but also a little nervous. With the lamp still incomplete and the graphics for the space yet to be created, I still have a lot hanging in the balance.
Wish me luck!
I dropped off the table base at Midland Powder Coating on Wednesday and picked it up today. As I was coming in the back door, I snapped this photo with my phone (hence the poor quality):
And here is a shot in my studio to show the main materials and colors together. Practically spot on with the rendering I had made.
$85 for the job and of course, worth it. The table is getting there…
The legs for the table are finally complete. They are extremely rigid and exhibit no racking. Dave bowed them ever so slightly so that they sit flat on any floor (this is necessary as no floor is totally flat and the table would rock otherwise.) Cold roll steel was used which apparently was too rigid for the radius I required for the bends at the bottom (either that or the metal had some impurities making it brittle…)
Dave kept a piece that showed how the metal cracked. Circled in red. The Piece to the left shows how he has bent thousands of pieces of cold roll of the same thickness in a similar way.
Dave managed to fudge it so that it looks like the legs were nicely bent. If I were to make this again, I would use hot roll steel as it is more flexible. I had thought that cold roll was just better than hot, and in many applications this may be true, but not in every application. I checked all measurements and they are to spec. The job wound up costing $150, which I think is fair. He said it would be more cost effective to do mutiples…go figure! Dave was really nice. It was good working with him.
A couple of shots of Dave’s shop. Pretty cool.
Now it is time for the table top to be cut on the CNC and for the drawer to be made. I spent more time resizing all of the table parts so that they fit on the 4′x4′ 3-Form panel and leave enough room for the handles of the chair. I am nervous about cutting the material. It is expensive enough that if anything goes wrong (knock on plastic) I am in a bind. I have just enough material to make what I need and can’t afford any snafus. Other than the handles, the pieces are not complex, so my fear is mitigated somewhat.
(Update- because it has taken me so long to get this posted I now have the table top cut completely. It was VERY scary there for a half hour or so. Because the job would take longer than the shop is open, I had paused the job in the middle and went home for the night. Unfortunately some time during the night, the power in the neighborhood went out causing the computer with all of my setup data/coordinates to reboot and loosing all of this information. A shop tech, Patrick Brennan, helped me get things lined up again. A laborious and slightly imperfect process. But the pieces look great now. Thanks Patrick!)
The mold for the lights is proving to be the most frustrating part of this project so far. As I write this, I am cutting more pieces on the CNC. The last couple attempts in MDF were not satisfactory. There was also an issue with an MDF panel not being held down hard enough onto the table (which has a fairly strong vacuum to keep panels secure) which caused a piece to go flying and the board itself to shift in such a way that the job could not be recovered. This was after being 3 and half hours into the job…anyway, I am using a low formaldahyde resin partical board. It is more porous than MDF and there is some risk of little pieces chipping out when it is being cut. But it does seem to cut better than MDF. Crossing my fingers. I am starting to feel the deadline heat a little bit.
I’d like to address a couple of issues that I had considered to some degree prior to the design of the pieces, but which I had not spelled out explicitedly early on. The first is my target demographic and the second is weight of materials.
I had in mind a middle to upper-middle class person for these pieces. I think I was concerned about too many restrictions when weighing cost of environmentally friendly materials against a demographic with less disposable income. I think it would pose an interesting and challenging design problem to address this demographic in this way, but that is not my focus this time around.
I think price would ultimately be comparable to Room & Board prices when the cost of labor is controlled more (multiples, right Dave?). The 3-Form material cost is very high unless I use only the reclaim panels like I have for this project. But I would be at the mercy of whatever is available, which changes frequently. New panels are so expensive that I would need to reconsider the application of the material so that more of it could be stretched over more pieces.
The BioFiber Boards are somewhat pricey but not prohibitively so and most of the board gets used so cost from waste is less. Steel is relatively cheap with little waste (I had a 3″ piece left over from the 12′ I purchased at Discount Steel.) Hardware is a little pricey but has price breaks when purchased in quantity.
Once I have total costs tallied, I can add in labor and time and have a more accurate price point. Not quite there yet.
One thing that was considered but not dealt with in a satisfactory manner is the weight of the materials that I am using. The table and chair are going to be much heavier than I thought. If I had more time, I would redesign the chair to have more pieces cut out of it to reduce weight but not impact structural integrity. The table should have either hollow bar or aluminum for the legs. The table top is heavy but can’t really be avoided with the current design. 40lbs is heavier than I’d thought.
Lesson learned.
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