Construction of smaller elements and day to day images

Lighting tests

Back log of images. Here is a lighting test i did with the l.e.d rear lights. i designed a simple parallel circuit which would provide the same current to each l.e.d powered by a 12v battery. i included a switch on the circuit which will be mounted underneath the car to save the battery for shows and portfolio photography but the battery can also be easily changed

Completed recaro seats with buckles

After all the faf i had with trying to 3d print the seats i decided it best to quickly sculpt them and then mould and cast in a similar mixed compound of gunfoam and PU fast cast resin.i added the seatbelts later as a little finishing touch but the view of these will be minimal with the tinted windscreen and side windows.

Getting ready for and painting

A lot of filling and sanding later i managed to get the car body to a nice finish using layers of primer to spot rough patches as i sanded back the layers, including filler primer and elbow grease. i prep'ed the car with grey primer as suggested by Abacus (who mixed the Lotus Krypton Green for me). panel wipe and raggs removed all the dust before finally spraying with the devilbiss which i set to give me a medium fan and paint amount and a pressure of around 28-30 psi. I found this to be the best pressure for the paint i was using and the gun and nozzle combination of various sites and youtube tutorials.

Smaller components for 3d printer

here is the last bed of 3d elements i will need to print for my model not including spares. The parts include rear diffuser and exhaust system holder, rear and front light l.e.d holders, rear light honeycomb patterns, wing mirrors, petrol cap, license plate, indicators, window wiper components, alloy badges and rear and front badges. all parts are modeled in rhino and 3ds max with the use of photographic reference and my line drawings from the blue prints.com
I have organised the bed with components as close to one another as possiblke with some elements inside one another to save on material costing and carefully planned the orientation of each part to ensure the lowest possible pricing. When loaded in to netfabb my models were almost all aplicable for the Objet 3d printer straight off with only minor, easily editable errors. i hope to gain clean prints from this job although i am semi scepticle about the size of some on the smallest pasrts and will have to wait for the outcome to know if alterior paths must be taken.

Body work and Professional practice

i was able to get very clean 3 layered fiberglass pulls from my mould which were a lot easier to clean up in this material than to get perfect in the clay. I guess this is where the world of automotive and product differs because i was creating a product model in the style of automotive techniques because i wanted to progress and inevitably show of my skill set. In modern practice and as i found from my visit to amalgam, like for like 1:8th scale models are now created by taking scans from the real cars, editing the meshes to make appropriate for scaled models and then cncing the parts.
Although the clean up of the body work took a long time is was a relatively straight forward process and i still believe for a model this scale it was hard using tiny tools to make the finished sculpt perfect. i still believe that i made the right choice in stopping the sculpting short of perfection to alter and refine the model body in resin. Whilst refining this main body of the model there are smaller jobs i can do in between waiting for filler and paint to dry.

New version tyres

Because the wax lasercutting attempts didnt work out quite as clkean as i had expected i decided to go back to the drawing board in modeling and 3d printing th tyre tread pattern instead. to save somewhere in the region of £100 in 3d resin costing i printed only the exterior 3mm of the tyre tread making a sleeve that sliding on perfectly to a newly turned chemiwood inner for the tyre. i chamfered the inned edge on the tyre and lasercut the bridgestone logo for the official bridgestone tyre tread. When mould in a simple box mould i played around with gum foam and fast cast resin mixes to create a high density black pigmented ready finished foam that correctly portrayed the tyres appearance giving them slight give and a rubbery texture and look. multiple were quickly cast to be time efficient.

50 hour Daedric dagger prop

 Based on a real time frame, the idea was to create a hero prop and multiple other props for varied use in different materials within 1 working week as part of my studies for FMP along side my 1:8 scale lotus exige. Having done similar work in the past on various movie sets but nothing purely off my own back, i decided from my mock interview that it would be great to broaden my portfolio and demonstrate a like for like model which i could be asked to make working as a professional in the film industry. I created the sculpt in around 1-2 full working days from start to finish from y2k le beau touche automotive modeling chavant. The wooden and wire armature along with the durability of the clay gave enough strength to withstand detail and fine/ thin parts for the blade where water based or wed could not have. I created a 2 part mdf/silicon slam mould, identical in spec to the ones created for axes on Thor : The dark world, as this would later enable a number of processes. This type of mould meant i could base paint and/or select different materials for different parts of the prop the quickly slam the mould together with t bar locators and fill the mould with another desired material. i could control different appearances and weights of the prop as well as the vulnerability to breakage if needed for a breakaway prop. For my hero dagger i buttered the handle with a polyurethane gum foam, which is a self skinning expanding foam used widely throughout the prop industry to create soft props and guns for stunt scenes. This gave the handle a leathery wound texture with a bit of give to it. I layed up Fast cast resin with black pigment and aluminium powder in the blade for a darkened metal and then filled the core with pigmented black fast cast. When painted and aged this dagger will look great and this project just goes to show the real scale working times of the industry. If necessary i could successfully complete this or similar projects in my professional career and cast multiple props for various uses. i intend to follow my hero prop with a breakaway version cored with biscuit foam and spaghetti. When splintered in slow motion cinema this gives a great realistic sharding effect.

Wheel arches

In the backlog of images i have building up i found this. to ensure consistency between the 4 wheel arches i turned the correct diameter piece from chemiwood which i then created a silicone box mould of to cast 2 fast cast wheel arches from. i then hand finished them as neccesary to ensure correct fitting and placement for the 4 parts of the coresponding bodywork. This idea inevitably saved me a lot of time sculpting perfect arches and ensures for a cleaner pull from my final bodywork mould

Bodywork mould

I created a brush on, or butter on silicone jacket to ensure the detail and shape of my pattern was captured. after painting on a think silicone layer, i painted on another layer of silicone with thixo in it and added scrap chunk bits cut to size. Because the pink silicone (smartsil 25) has a lower shure rating and a lower viscosity i find sometimes that it is too floppy. What the green (supersil) chunks added to the 1 part jacket was a thicker reinforcement that gave the silicone inner a backbone to stand in its correct place. This also saved me roughly 1 kg of silicone as the third and final layer with thixotropics only needed to fill the gaps created by the green lattice shapes. Once the silicone had set i scalped in to the inner and shimmed ready for a 2 part fiberglass jacket to ensure undercuts such as the wheel arched could easily be released foor my fiberglass pulls.

Finishing stages of sculpt

Nearing the finish of the base bodywork for the lotus i used my steel ribbon tools to get the y2k to the smoothest finish possible within my time frame. because of the working hours required for the rest of the project elements plus another 50 hour project this meant the sculpt wasnt quite to the standard of a 1:1 scale automotive model but nor did it have to be. I had got the sculpt to a point where time spent smoothin in this material was wasted in comparison to moulding and casting my pattern for finishing in a harder material. I found that by finishing a element of the sculpt to perfection and then begining on another element that the first part would get knocked and the lines less crisp just because of the softness of the material in comparison to something with a hard finish. I relaised that by making a mould i could lay up a fibre glass copy which i could work to the perfect shape.

Provisional deadline/Halfway project

Provisional deadline/ halfway project tutorial hand in photographs

Chemiwood turned tire

This picture shows the turned chemiwood tire with a aluminium powder, fast cast alloy in relation to a standard easyflo 60 fasy cast alloy witht he mock up chavant tire.

Shaping problems / measuring tools

By quickly massing out my bodywork i began to take more measurements to ensure placement of smaller grooves and curves were falling in the correct place. I used a rig over the top of the Sculpt made by a former graduate of this course along with a set of large calipers i made to take measurements where necessary. Because i could use the CNC to cut my blue foam maquette there are areas of the model that are unseen by the latter method used. areas such as the bonnet, windscreen, and rear curvatures of the car to name a few have been uncaptured by the use of 3 dimensions when cutting the blue foam and have had to be altered by stripping the clay back and amending the blue foam basis.

Alloy pulls and tyre plans

3d print, 2 part plug mould and first fast cast pull

mock up of tire size and wax tread idea

So here is the mould i created from my initial Objet 3d printed alloy. From this i have since had multiple pulls in different types of fast cast, some with aluminium metal powders which i will play about with later to decide on a final alloy finish. I created a rough green chavant tire which the alloy fits snug inside working against dimensions from my drawings of around 74mm diameter with a 48mm inner core. I intend to turn a cleaner copy from chemiwood with the same dimensions - 4mm from the exterior dimension. this is because i have a 2mm thick wax sheet as shown in picture which i intend to laser cut a desired tread patterns from and roll around the exterior face of the chemiwood tire. from this i can then add branding and tire sizes and final mould the tire for multiple pulls in what i imagine will look best in gun foam rubber. (testers to come). I believe this will give the best appearance and look great for believable scaled down tyres

Powder printing Recaro seat

This short video shows The Powder printer working on my Recaro seat .stl file.
Unfortunately the mesh was to thin to survive the print and the outcome was a failure. At this stage i have now used all 3 of the 3d printers available to us here at AUB and have a much better insight to project managing different 3d models on each of the printers. At this stage i intend now to leave the Recaro seat unfinished in order to put more time in to the exterior components of my model, as i may not get round to the interior and it is still early days in terms of being able to foresee whether i will in fact have sufficient time to model the interior as well.

Le Beau Touché massing out

Because my blue foam was cut from a rough modelled shape of the car,  it means i can quickly find the shape i need by padding out with in between 0.5 and 1cm. I am trying to follow various books and take more relevant pieces from each to achieve the method of working best suited to my project but it seems as a first port of call i am best to mass out my car body leaving it to be quite gestural until i get further down the line to refining and more accurately taken measurments.

Le Beau Touché shaping

By making an array of tools similar to those i have found to be used in various automotive design books, i will be able to mass out my car body structure a lot quicker and eventually smooth the object a lot easier. By using the spot welder and various tools in the metal workshop i have made 3 different sized scrapers. I also purchased blue steel and rubber kidney which i can use in a similar way for curved edges.

Alloy Moulding

The Alloy print from my remodel was a success using the Objet printer and where replications could be made quickly to achieve the amount of these i need for my model this method would be expensive in comparison to quickly moulding them. The moulding proccess also means i will be able to play around with metal powders in order to get a high polished cast version of my alloy if so desired rather than a gloss painted rim. I quickly began this moulding proccess and didnt get a snap of the 3d printed alloy but will upload one when my mould is complete. i have designed my mould with multiple breathers as a 2 part box plug mould. this will allow for my to pour my material into a large gap, then merely slowly lower the blue plug visible on the picture inside to push out the unwanted air through the breathers. Videos to follow.

Blue Foam maquette alternative

Because of the queue for the CNC being too long and the fact that multiple companies outside of university haven't got back to me about the chance to outsource there machinery i have chose to hand make the individual pieces however old fashioned it may be, it is inevitably going to save me time and not be to dissimilar to the latter. I chopped the model into equal 25mm pieces in rhino 4.0 and laid out according holes i would drill into the foam later to connect the pieces together stronger and make sure the alignment is correct. The following pictures show this process from computer to finished maquette ready for Y2K automotive chavant a.s.a.p.