I consider myself an artist first and a technician second, so I decided to combine this project with an artistic dream I've had ever since I heard about 3D printing technology. The dream being to create digital sculptures as a fine art. So I approached Bradley Rigdon, CEO of Print To 3D and asked him if they were up for the challenge. Sure enough, they were and you can see here the beautiful result they were able to achieve:


http://digitaldouble.net/blog/SOM/som_print_01.jpg

It wasn't easy. They had various hurdles to overcome, first the hurdle of generating a model that could be read by their system and second getting it to print without breaking. This last and successful print took over 24 hours to generate followed by carefully removing (by hand) all the support material used to keep the shape in place while it solidified. To see this process in action check out this video on YouTube. Here is an image showing what the model looked like before the structural material was removed:


http://digitaldouble.net/blog/SOM/som_print_02.jpg

Additional photographs of the digital sculpture:


http://digitaldouble.net/blog/SOM/som_print_03.jpg


http://digitaldouble.net/blog/SOM/som_print_04.jpg

This sculpture is the first in what will be a series of nine digital sculptures. I've titled this one "Man of Two Visions".