True replicas: its all in the trimming...

Jingdezhen is famous for it's super thin refined porcelain. This is why it was so much wanted and desired all around the world. Why the emperial kilns where in Jingdezhen for the exclusive production for the bowls, dishes and objects for the emperor in the forbidden city. I alway asumed that this insane thinness was achieved by throwing. But its not. its all in the trimming! Trimming is the process after the throwing, when the pots are placed on a spinning wheel and trimmed with special tools till they are so thin that the are almost translucent and as smouth as a shell...This same process is now being used to make my true replicas.

True replicas: Throwing replicas

In Jingdezhen the porcelain clay is shaped by throwing on a wheel. That’s how they did it ages ago and how they still do it, nothing changed. The well kneaded clay is thrown hard onto the centre of the bat. Like a ballet the craftsman in now forming the clay into a bowl. Ones the wheel was made spinning by turning a long stick, now electric wheels are used. This craftsman I visited made me one Ming bowl in one cigarette, including the calculations compensating for the shrinkage of the clay after firering. Looking at the pictures of the original and with thousands of similar bowls in 'the memory of his hands' he shaped my replicas in know time. History and heritage are so alive here it sometimes almost make me cry...and here they don't care, its just what they do...

 

True replicas: Ye, the model- and mould maker

In Jingdezhen there are almost endless different neighborhoods specialized in different steps in the process of making ceramics. From clay refining to glaze mixing and from throwing pots in all sizes and shapes to carving incredible detailed decorations.  This process of porcelain making and all its steps are portrayed in the Museum of the Imperial Kiln site in the city. Today I was in Sculpture factory, one of these areas visiting Ye. He is modeling with and after my 3D prints, thus repairing the fractures and missing pieces. This resulted in a series of slibcasting moulds in plaster for porcelain casting. 

True replicas: function and materiality

We reconstruct the past from 'sources': objects, remains and texts. They are discovered, excavated, collected and preserved, serving as sources to reconstruct and study our history. As a society, we derive our identity, our ‘sense of belonging’ from this heritage - these objects. But as soon as these objects became historical source and put in museums and storage, they left some of their soul behind.  These utensils lost their function, their nearness and role in human lives, their materiality.

With True replicas I want to give these objects their soul back: their function and the experience of their materiality. Therefore I use the replica, aiming to stretch the boundaries of traditional notions of the replica as an autonomous object based on a historical source. The replica as a means to give back a historical 'untouchable' object its function and material experience.

The goal of the project is not to make the most literal copy of the original. I want to use 3D prototyping technology combined with the traditional techniques used in the original to make these replicas. Merging material and immaterial heritage. Here in Jingdezhen I will explore how I can replicate a series of 17th century Chinese porcelain by using 3D scanning an printing techniques and by applying the ongoing tradition of porcelain production that still is (almost) unchanged since the production of the originals. The whole process of making these replicas will play a essential role in these new objects. Looking for true replicas in its most literal sense.

True Replicas: just arived in Jingdezhen

I Just arrived in Jingdezhen, the world capital of porcelain. The city in South China where lays the origin of this magical material, that became so wanted all over the world. I am invited by Museum Prinsenhof in Delft to develop work for the exhibition at this museum about Prcelain from the emperial kilns. I wil work on this project together with artist and sculptor Hans van Bentem and designer David Derksen. The first impression of the city is overwelming: porcelain is everywhere!

 

Now (27&28th of August) on show at DROOG Amsterdam: True Replicas

foto: Jantien Roozenburg

The two projects presented here examine how 3D prototyping and virtual techniques can be utilised to bring the stories of our heritage back into daily life.

3D prototyping are emerging technologies that offer new possibilities to render physical objects into digital data and vise versa, such as 3D-scanning and -printing. With Augmented Reality one can add virtual layers of contextual information on to an object, that can than be discovered using an application on a smartphone or tablet.  With Augmented Reality, objects are enriched and transformed into information carriers that can enrich the story of an object beyond the walls of a museum, archive or a library. Bringing the story of our heritage to our kitchen tables.

The underlying questions we seek to answer with these projects are; What is the meaning stored  in  all these historical objects? How does the story behind an object change our perception and appreciation of that object? What is the relevance of these objects in our increasingly digital and virtual society? How are these stories relevant to us today? Augmented Reality and 3D prototyping offer opportunities to investigate answers to these questions.

foto: Jantien Roozenburg

foto: Jantien Roozenburg

foto: Jantien Roozenburg

True Replicas @ DROOG: Invitation

We invite you to 'True Replicas' an exhibition of Studio Maaike Roozenburg at Hotel Droog at Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th of august. Here two projects will be presented pivoted on the junction of design, heritage and technology. Projects examining how 3D prototyping and virtual techniques can bring our heritage back to life. On display, to tray and to play with: Smart replica #A7663.To look at touch and examine: research and sketches of replicas of excavated historical objects from Amsterdam soil. 

Saturday Sunday 27,28th 2016

9am - 7pm

on display, to tray and to play with: Smart replica #A7663

to look at and examine: research and sketches of replicas of excavated historical objects from Amsterdam soil.

DROOG

Staalstraat 7B
1011 JJ Amsterdam
the Netherlands

rsvp and more information about the project:

maaike@maaikeroozenburg.nl

www.maaikeroozenburg.nl

Revision of two scanning methods, by Kotryna Valečkaitė

As promised, we would give the summarized results for the two scanning sessions that we had: with CT scanners and with Artec Spider scanner.

Part of the results of the latter unexpectedly disappeared during the post-processing. The scan which promised the most for us, Hermione handle detail, was among the missing files. We hoped to get better results of the floral ornament and combine it with the CT-scan body, only the chosen comparison model and Harry survived.

As seen, for the comparison we chose the finest model we had. The lice-comb teeth were approximately 0.5 mm diameter with even smaller gaps between them. Due to this, the scanning technique used by Artec Spider could never achieve a proper result: too much was not visible, even with the precision of 0,05 mm. In other words, the grid which the range finding device projected could not be interpreted in the gaps and the result was a block with a texture instead of a comb. Moreover, looking at he scan of Harry we can see a big inconvenience for us: only the outer surface and the sections at the breaks were captured. Moreover, the cracked surface texture was not captured, because we got the file only in a mesh file.

Therefore, it would be expected that this problem would not be so apparent in CT-scans. This technique captures the sections of the object, instead of making an interpretation of surface. Just then these sections are interpreted into 3D files. However, the precision of 0,3 mm proved to be insufficient for the artifact we chose:

As seen, the result was a more consistent file, which could actually be printed. Nevertheless, it was far from what we would call sufficient. Expecting this, we also made micro-CT scans of the object. The sneak-peaks of the object in the lab itself looked very promising. Yet our and publicly available computers could not handle the size of the data set (over 2000 sections!) and could only give results in the lowest resolution, leaving us with the following model:

As seen in the picture, the separate teeth are clearly visible, although the main body is missing. This can be easily solved if the used computer has 16GB RAM, since we could get a proper model in Avizo a few moments before it crashed due to memory insufficiency.

To conclude, only the micro-CT scanner offered the sufficient results for the compared artifact. The Artec Spider is very interesting if surface detailing in necessary or if textures/colors have to be captured. However, if not enough scans are made and combined, you will get an object lacking details, thus resulting in incredible amount of work hours in post-processing. Another solution for this would be to make CT-scans and combine them with the Artec Spider scans only for the details.

Plaster prints, structural solutions and CNC-milling, by Kotryna Valečkaitė

This week we focused on production techniques, yet not all of them proved to be possible to produce. In the background we also finished up processing all of the CT scans, of which an overview article will follow next week.

To begin with, we made multiple 3D prints: plaster prints of all of the loose pieces and a tryout of structural solutions in Ultimaker2. The first one we decided to translate into a game during the science fair, while the second one was primarily made for the mid-project presentation. Moreover, we made a form with a CNC milling machine which was later used for vacuum forming. This proved to be the cheapest, easiest and the most user friendly object so far.

Plaster print

Structural solution
 
CNC milling and vacuum forming
  

Secondly, we discarded paper printing as a possibility due to two main reasons:

1. Our files were too large to be opened in multiple programs with which we could have given the surfaces color;
2. The delivery times were too long

This led us to choosing another form which would work the best in the Connex printer. Yet that would lead to rather large expenses, exceeding 100 euros per object. What is more, using soft materials would mean that we strive more for a visual than a functional prototype, since the objects could not withstand warm drinks or even a dishwasher. However, some of this could also be achieved by simply printing the different materials apart in the Ultimaker2. Simply put, we are still struggling to determine what fidelity level we are looking for and what each prototype can achieve. Moreover, instead of having a single idea to work out we actually multiple interpretations of the same object:

1. Cheap, everyday object (vacuum form)
2. Object focusing on the aesthetics of historical footprint/3D printing (Connex prints/plastic injection molding)
3. A game, interactive cup (plaster print of shards)

In other words, it means that the objects form their own trajectories and cannot be easily compared with each other.

To conclude, we now have to focus on what precisely we want to achieve in these trajectories and how to do it using rapid prototyping techniques. That is not what we planned during the first week, but that will lead to more evenly divided workflow and, hopefully, more interesting results.

Comparison of image processing software 3, by Kotryna Valečkaitė

After multiple emails and a Skype talk we finally acquired a trial version of Mimics. According to their representative, the program is mainly focused at medical uses. Most importantly how do bones, implants react to friction and temperature changes.
This got us interested, since this was also rather important in our project: we were using CT scans to determine the break-line positions and in the end also fill up the missing shards with (possibly) other materials. In other words, it would be very interesting to see how different connections between materials would influence the durability of the object. I must add, that this is only a presumption after a talk with their representative and we might not be able to go so deep in the subject due to the time limitations. Yet this could be very interesting as a research subject for future students.
Having only a week of work left till the presentation, we decided to only  check what were the possibilities of the translation (CT-scans to .stl) procedure and if the results could be better than from Avizo.
The interface seemed clear, but more limited to what was offered at the latter program. It seemed actually very similar to already mentioned Seg3D, which is also focused on medical use.

Interface of Mimics

After comparing multiple objects we came to conclusion that this program does not offer better translation. The meshing is coarser and even though the stepping is less visible, so are the break lines.

In conclusion, this program might offer higher possibilities going deep into material interaction(3-matic research), but for simple .stl translations Avizo is still the best option.
P.s. For post processing use MeshLab (open source!): there you can both reduce the fineness of the mesh and smooth it.

Posted in Week 4  

Reproduction Methods

As told in the planning, each of us would come up with a multiple reproduction methods for Harry. We pitched these ideas to each other and discussed which would suit the purpose of this project best. Afterwards everybody choose their favorite and best method, making sure we had a diversity of production techniques.
◄Click on me!
Sander Plaster Print
The goal of this technique is to recreate Harry as well as possible. Therefore, the existing cup will be plaster printed in several pieces. Af varnishing the inner and outer surface, these pieces will be glued together in order recreate the cracks. The holes shall be filled with separately (Ultimaker) 3D-printed parts.
Irene Paper printing
Using the technique of 3D printing paper it is possible to make a relatively inexpensive product using a 3D printer. We don’t expect this technique to be waterproof. By experimenting with lacquer or varnish we can find out the possibilities to make the cups usable for daily usage. To print the rough version of Harry it will cost €34,- euros.
Kotryna 3d printing/plastic injection molding
With this technique we could achieve a very sophisticated look for a high end product. With this design we would bring out the beauty of 3D printing by making an expressive carcass which will either support the cavities in the structure or the whole structure. This also accentuates the historical marks on the object, which is necessary because the original form is then recreated in transparent material. The latter can either be achieved by plastic injection molding (which is beneficial if this is produced in larger numbers) or by using a Objet500 Connex printer (very convenient, because the whole object can be printed out in one go). Moreover, this design would be very interesting if steel 3D printing could be achieved in very small diameters, since then the translucent material could be glass.
Jorinde Vacuum Forming
The main reason for choosing this technique is because 3d printing is too expensive for a consumer product, so the product is still not used for its purpose. The most used cup has got to be the plastic disposable cup. This cup is made with the technique thermoforming, but this is not achievable in the short amount of the we have. Therefore the simplified technique vacuum forming will be used. With vacuum forming s sheet of plastic is heated and forced against the mold by the suction of air. It is important that form is mold-releasing.
With this technique it isn’t possible to use different materials or make holes. To preserve the historic character of the cup the difference between the shards will be made visible with a difference in height. CNC milling at PMB cost 10 euros.

	Basic (existing) shape	Cracks	Holes	Speciality
Sander	Plaster, several separately printed parts	Through glueing the parts together	Seperately 3D-Printed	Trying to recreate Harry as well as possible
Irene	Paper		Different colour	Low budget
Jorinde	Plastic, vacuum formed as one part	height difference between the shards	Holes have to be filled, visable with height difference	Making an old thrown away cup into a useable and disposable product
Kotryna	Plastic, (partially) 3D printed (and plastic molding)	Surface texture, carcass deformations	Carcass or carcass deformations (depends on the final design)	Showcase of 3D printing possibilities and accentuating historical footprint in newly added  details

CNC milling and 3D printing, by Kotryna Valeckaite

Today as a part of our minor our student group was introduced to CNC milling and 3D printing with Ultimaker2. Since we were free to choose the tryout objects, we decided on one of the .stl files we extracted from the CT scans. “Harry”, as our focus object, seemed like a great begin. Yet just after loading the files to Cura (the Ultimaker software), we noticed that the model was not completely straight. That was due to its original position during the scan. In other words, the object nested in-between two other objects was not completely parallel to the ground plane. This we tried to fix by manually rotation in Cura. In the end, it was not perfect and due to that the bottom edge of the cup was sketchy. Moreover, Ultimaker 2 seemed not like the right machinery for such task. That was mostly because we had many open, hanging edges and pieces which had to be supported. The latter is possible with the same material, but that leaves clear marks on the surface.

Removing support structure

Final product (1:2)

Parallel to 3D printing we also did some CNC milling. Just like in Ultimaker, we used “Harry”. For this production technique we used DeskProto. This program both translates the files for the machine and helps to create a frame for the object (mostly necessary to get a clear reference point). However, the latter can also be manually done in other CAD software.
Production of the object took merely 15 minutes, but we did not strive for the highest resolution. That meant that we took the biggest cutter available (d8mm) and got a sketchy cup with clear stepping. Moreover, due to the cavity in the cup and flexibility of the material, mistakes were made (seen in the picture below) and the model was very flaky.

“Harry” from foam (1:1)

Since we had more than 1,5h left, we proposed to make another model in CNC machine. This time to see how much detail we could achieve. For this task we chose “Hermione” as the model, yet due to the time limitations we could only take a piece of it.  We worked on the object from 3 sides, starting with 8mm cutter and finishing with 4mm. This procedure took at least twice as long as the previous one. What is more, during the first try the foam melted, completely destroying the model. In the end, results of the second one were not as clear as in the digital model, but still quite amazing: knowing that we used very soft foam, could not precisely put the model on the reference point and that we did not use the smallest cutter.

Foam “Hermione” (1:1)

In conclusion, the CNC milling could be an option for the final product, if we went for a single material transparent/translucent look. This would be possible by milling stacked and glued plexiglass. 3D printing in single material is also very interesting, but with this we would have to sacrifice some of the qualities of the end product (historical footprint, practicality, aesthetics).

Processing scans into 3D models (take 2), Kotryna Valečkaitė

As promised a day ago we would keep you posted about our adventures with image processing software. Even though we did not receive the trial version of Mimics, Avizo provided a very pleasing outcome and it also read .dcm files.
The program itself is very user friendly and incorporates visual programming with automatized properties, thus giving  the user just enough freedom to not crash his computer or make the process incomprehensible. In this sense it is very similar to 3Dslicer, yet Avizo has more options and more finesse in the details.
The final result is not yet perfect due to rather clear “stepping” in the final 3D model. This, according to our “informer” from the Industrial design engineering faculty, could be solved with Geomagic. However, now we can clearly state that the plan A mentioned in this post is actually possible.

Avizo interface

Detail in Rhino

Processing scans into 3D models (take 1), Kotryna Valečkaitė

Comparison of image processing software 1

Directly after receiving the scans on Tuesday we jumped into processing them into 3D models. To keep it clear we used “Hagrid”(obj. 5) as an example for all of the programs.
As noted in the previous post, this process has multiple steps and in order to gain the highest level of detail, a lot of tweaking is necessary.
The usual procedure goes as follows:
(0. Changing the .ima or .dcm files into program compatible format. Most of our scans were made in .dcm format which was not compatible with multiple programs: so far we tried RenameMaster, which did not work)

1. Loading the .dcm or .ima files into a 3D processing program. These file formats actually contain only 2D information: the sections of the object. In other words, the 3D model is an interpretation of multiple sections and therefore steps between them might be visible, if the resolution is not high enough.
2. Selecting threshold and filtering the right information. Depending on the program this step might be automatized. If not, it might be very heavy on your computer. Therefore, a device with a good graphics card and 16GB RAM is advised (it would work on 6 or 8GB RAM, but it goes slow and tends to crash often).
3. Loading the 3D file into a volume renderer to get an editable mesh (.stl). 

To begin with, we started with Seg3D. This program did not want to read .dcm files, thus we only worked with test files, which were in .ima format. The interface was clear, but to extract minuscule details it needed a lot of filtering and playing with histograms. That was extremely hard on our computers (6-8GB RAM, 2.0-2.03GHz) and took over an hour to get a decent file. Moreover, the final result is given in .nrrd format which later has to be translated to .stl with the help of ImageVis3D. The file looked rather detailed in Seg3D, but the final .stl was worthless.

Later on, we received a tutorial from an past student of our supervisor Maaike. It suggested using DeVide. Unlike the previous program this one works on the basis of visual programming. Thus all of the steps can be easily retraced. This program can directly export to .stl reducing the possibility of getting a very rigid mesh, like with Seg3D. Unfortunately, the program did not want to work on our computers.
After this failure we contacted one of the researchers in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. He adviced to try out the following programs:

1. 3D slicer (open source)
2. Avizo (paid, evaluation copy available after contacting the firm)
3. Mimics (paid, evaluation copy available after contacting the firm)

The first of the list (3Dslicer) proved to be very user friendly (although it did not read the .dcm files). The information is collected automatically after choosing a preset and is quite precise. One can also select if to smooth the surface: both outputs are interesting in form, with the edgy one as an expressive interpretation of a kitschy object of the past. If used for the final product, more mesh post-processing is necessary



To be continued…

Making Choises, by Jorinde Smits

Posted  by Jorinde Smits

We had to make some choices since there were  a lot of bowls, plates, hair brushes and other ceramics. To distinguish them we gave them names. We joked about ‘Harry Pottery’ and decided to choose the names from Harry Potter characters. We based our choices at differences of advantages and interesting characteristics. Since we didn’t know how much time it would take to digitalise the cups and plates, we numbered them in order of importance.
We took in account the different types of advantages.

1. Holes
   To make the cups useful again, we need to fix the holes.
2. Details
   Some cups like Harmione and Hagrid have some nice details. Since the CT scanner is not that accurate we have to find other solutions for bringing those details back.
3. Fixing techniques
   There are different ways used for fixing the objects. How can we translate those methods in our new design?

We decided to exclude the hair brushes in our process, because it has nothing to do with tableware.
1. Harry
Bowl with interesting holes the missing shards left. Diameter of +/- 15 centimeters.

2. Hermione
This one has some nice decorations. Diameter of +/- 12 centimeters.
 

3. Ron
Here the advantage is to replace the three separate shards. Diameter of +/- 18 centimeters.

4. Ginny
Small plate. Missing a piece and two repaired cracks. Diameter of +/- 15 centimeters.


5. Hagrid
Kind of fruit bowl with lid. It has nails and glue as fixing methods. The cracks are really fragile, but as good as complete. Diameter of +/- 25 centimeters.


6. Dobby
We liked this small cup because of its small hole. Diameter of 5 centimeters.


7. Snape
This one is familiar to Hagrid, but much smaller. The one defect is the bottom which is fixed. The cup is complete. Diameter +/- 15 centimeters.