The Coolest Butter Knife Ever: 3D Printed Hollow Form Object

 

3D Printed Hollow Form Object:

This project served as a way for students to become more familiar with 3D printers, and to watch their designs in rhino translate into real world objects.

Pt.1 : Concept Generation

   After a while of trying to come up with some shapes and forms on paper, I began to realize that I enjoyed shapes that had lots of sharp ends, I thought for a bit about what I could do with these forms but of course I wanted to see what it would look like in rhino before making any final decisions. 

First sketch, mostly just playing around with triangles as the main theme

This Second sketch combines the first drawing into a new circular base

After considering all of the triangles and pointed objects, I decided I wanted to formulate an object that only had rounded edges. 

Pt. 2: Rhino 1/2

    Once I decided that I was done reviewing some of my designs I wanted to see what they would look like in the program, along with other shapes that I also wanted to play around with as well. I decided to select some of my favorites, and after some glaring into my computer screen I realized that these shapes could form a dagger of a sorts. 

This first form was one of my favorites, based on multiple forms of criteria. The first was Function, after thinking to myself about how some of these forms could be made into a dagger, I decided that although there is a twist in the middle, the function of this design could be a handle. The second was form, which was the most crucial of all of the criteria, as the design of the handle may have not be realistic in real life, but an artistic statement due to the twist in the center. And lastly, the printability of the object, being the most important, which I felt quite confident given that there was a large base at the bottom of the form. 

This Form was by far one of my favorites, I decided that I loved it so much given that the shape would be simple enough for the 3D printer to produce and that the twists, also offered an alternative to the regular blade seen in daggers. Thus, being a wonderful use of form. Lastly, I also loved this form given that it had a great function, I thought to myself why I would need a mini dagger, and then it came to me. I want the coolest butter knife out there, and thus, I truly love the function of the object.

The form in question here was one that originated from my sketches, however, after some modifications, I decided that it would look best with the sphere at the bottom rather than at the top of the twists. Because of this, I decided that the form of the object would be essential of the creation of the object, and this model would offer itself as the most creative and aesthetic piece of the dagger. the printability was also another concern of mine given that this would be at the bottom of the blade, however after rationalizing that I could add a large skirt at the bottom of the sphere, I decided to go forward with including this design. Lastly, along with this object also being a purely aesthetic creation I decided that this sentiment was important to the function of the dagger as well. The dagger is supposed to be a small work of art, and I felt that the design would look far too jagged without this small detail at the bottom, therefore the function of this concept would be essential to bringing all of the pieces together. 

Pt. 2: Rhino 2/2

    After combining some of my favorite concepts, I decided to find a way to combine three of them into a dagger. At first I was very pleased with how the product turned out and was excited to see this object print, however, after scheduling a print job, it was Peter Redecop that made me realized that there would be many points in the design that would cause print failures. 

First design before print job:

    After some consideration, I decided that I needed to part ways with the design near the base of the model, for the print to work properly. I was very saddened by this fact, but I knew that the show must go on. After roughly an hour of redesign, my model was finally ready to be printed again, and I was still happy with the form of the object, given that it was the main goal was to still create an interesting looking dagger, and this redesign still did the trick. 

Pt. 3: The Print Job

After finally fixing up the mistakes in Rhino, my object was ready to print. I was surprised with how successful this turned out given that this print only took roughly two hours, and also failed once. Overall I was very happy with how this turned out and I am pleased with how my original concepts which I divided into small parts of a dagger (Handle, blade, detail) became a hybrid of these ideas that formed something I am very proud of, the coolest butter knife ever.