I’ve never been much of a structured academic, in College I spent 2 semesters in isolation exploring & teaching myself CAD/CAM and basic hydraulic die forming techniques. The application of both the theory and practical provided me with a lousy graduation show, 2 bulging sketch books of failures and mathematical tolerances, a few samples in acrylic and copper, questions, and a burning desire to finish what I started.

I actually used those failed samples in my interview with Central St. Martins for my Masters application. The Dean of applied arts said: “Your concepts, sketch books, and designs are incredible but the finished product doesn’t match your research, are you a theorist?”That sorta hurt, and I wasn’t sure at the time how to reply because she called me out. Deep down I knew exactly what she was saying. Though I was accepted (but couldn’t afford to go) she took me to school right there; I realized that greatness is forged through practice and application the idea is the first step.

I’m lucky to be opening my atelier on August 1st and with it I want to pick up where I left off focusing on design innovation. ‘Formation’ is as much a personal research project as an exploration of design, a quick look at previous posts on this blog (and twitter) should illustrate my personal war with theory w/o the practice.

Formation

The ‘hacker’ movement represents a counter culture that I feel a deep connection with. DIY everything, evolving, mashing, & communicating. I f you listen closely there is a low drone under all the high pitched Twitter meme noise from: Hack Labs , information architects like Matthew Milan , change agents like Mark Kuzniki , Futurists like THMVMNT , Mad Scientists like Ricky & Matt , and more.

That drone is the sound of production, people producing. No other time in history have we had the opportunity to predict and tackle future problems or simply prevent them armed with aesthetics & design. That exiting fact is the ‘Formation’.

Start-up: What does object design look like when it’s very existence is forged from change, interaction, & future application?

# As a small group exercise @ftjco will host a ‘solder camp” a #BYOS(older) event where we explore simple sensors, soldering techniques, application & design.

Essential to any Formation is Volume. In this case it’s a community seduced back from the cutting edge for a few hours of playing Dr. Frankenstein with crude electronics (and beer).

Forming, back to basics:

A challenge for most of the forms I produced was the material limitation of the dies themselves. Because the school limited the materials on the mills to waxes and plastics I had to source a dense resin. I settled on a product called ‘Butter Board’, a decent material to machine single cut no roughing passes needed. It actually held up pretty well in the hydraulic press forming .5mm (annealed) copper sheet without deformation. Thermal forming acrylic produced a result which was predicted: Complete die failure. The heat and pressure lead to cracking and deformation. The Devcon ‘Plastic Steel’ (dies) produced much the same results despite being enclosed in a heavy gauge steel ring. Objects often needed to be ‘organic’ in form, faceting or texture was rarely transfered.

This has lead me to explore both the sustainability of both the formed material and die (uses). Waste is the greatest problem with this form of prototyping/production and should be designed out of the process.

I felt a logical move away from plastics is glass production; an abundant, resusable, alternative material. And with it the classic inspirational design and production techniques of Lalique. The challenge with his methods is the cost of the moulds, we lose the ability to quickly prototype modify and scale. Enter graphite, machinable graphite used in the EDM process to be exact. It’s density make it excellent for texture & detail, it’s thermal properties would handle the heat of molten silica, and it’s strength make it a good candidate for the forming of metals.

Sounds good eh? Not quite. Graphite is MESSY and requires a serious vacuum system to protect the mill from being clogged with particles which are a lubricant in one direction, diamond hard in the other. So my search begins for a resource.

Begin Formation.

Replies welcome to @ryantaylor on Twitter convo tag #formation