Studio Spike

This piece was for practicing Digital Fabrication methods using the Rhino plug-in ‘Grasshopper’. However since I chose to work with steel, the digital fabrication portion only took around 2 hours, versus putting this together was the majority of the hard work that went into this piece. 

Made up of 55 faces this took about 30 hours of welding and 10 hours of grinding. 

The Ball:

This polyhedron ball is made up of 55 faces of 16 gauge steel. Using a Plasma CNC and a little bit of grasshopper, I was able to cut out these shapes to make the form. First I lasercut a chipboard model or template for welding and started there with sizing. Once I got the right size I plasma cut all the steel and used the  chipboard template for the proper angles. It was challenging to TIG  weld because the chipboard kept catching on fire and creating holes through the tack  welds. Once I got most of the bottom half done, I tore apart the chipboard model and patched the welds. Then pieces the top together one by one, taping a face to the welded pieces. Finally  once it was complete  with a couple rounds of patching, I grinded it down to be shining and fresh instead of having noticable markings from the welds. 

The Base:

Moving forward I plan to explore other options for the base. As a display this base works, but for the everyday im not sure yet. I want to possibly play with the idea of having it be able to spin, almost like a Disco ball.