CNC Mold For Cowboy Hat Slip Cast

 Hey Everyone, Ever, Anywhere in the universe, reading this silly design blog. 

Here's my last post for this semester, and it's straight back to rhino, not a grasshoppers antennae to speak of. 

For this project my goal was to slip cast a cowboy hat down in ceramics. I thought it would be really interesting to make a durable lasting piece of outdoor clothing into a material that's much more fragile.

Almost the entire hat is made with either network surface or edgesrf. In essence I drew the flat profiles of this hat with interpcrv, and then moved each of those points with their gumballs, until the resulting linework looked like it would make a good hat. the most difficult networks to sort out were definitely in the top of the hat, where the geometry is just really organic, and if I'm not wrong, actually normally formed by a craftsperson pinching the fabric by hand. what was difficult about this was deciding whereto split the networks, and then how to network the remaining holes. the resulting surfaces also don't fully close so I don't know how well the file will function for manufacturing, but it is a step in the right direction. 

After I had this model I simply cut off the bottom and made a simple loft into the basin of a box. the resulting shape could be a positive made of foam, to make a negative out of plaster, to then make the finished product out of clay. 

I hope to be able to review this and get it ready to cut. I did pull this model into fusion as a stp. , and it looked good I think, but I would need more experienced eyes to look it over. 

....and here's some renders.

Thanks for reading along. 

cheers,

Liam