Project 1: The Bowl

Aim

The first project, 'The Bowl' which is a hemisphere 3-D shape that needs to be created starting with an aluminium sheet which has been provided by the teacher/tutor. 

Procedure

Pre-Procedure

This pre-procedure is presented by tutors to show the students some technical steps we need to use or be prepared or will be prepared for doing project one.

Laser Cutting shown by Martin Boehnel

This is making four concentric rings for doing procedure one of the project which is use to make marking on the aluminium sheet to be cut and moulded, while also making a radius gauge to be use as a guide for getting the right radius. This is achieved using a laser cutter which is shown and prepared by Martin Boehnel. 

Concentric Rings

Radius Gauge

Laser Cutter

1

Use the 4 concentric rings to make the markings on the aluminium sheet using a black or red marker

These markings guides you on making the bowl by cutting and hitting it using specific tools to make the bowl.

2

Cut the aluminium sheet with the concentric rings marking on a hand lever sheer tool on the outer ring outer circle (the biggest circle that is drawn)

Aluminium sheet being cut by the hand lever sheer tool

Result

2.5

This is a supplementary task which is fixing the outer ring outer circle to make the edge of the bowl to be smoother which can be achieve by using a file tool to scrap of the unevenness and bumps of the outer circle

File

  

Filing the side

3

After cutting the aluminium sheet, it will be molded by using a melee hammer on a stump to create the 3-D hemisphere shape. The stump is use to provide the curvature of the bowl while being hit with the melee hammer depending on the spot. 

Melee Hammer+Stump

       

The melee hammer has a sharp and a blunt side from the head which each side has its own reason on why it is shape like that. The sharp side of the head is use to be hit on the concentric outer ring inner circle to give it a more precise hit on the marking to make it more curved in and stretch more inwards. 

Melee Hammer sharp side on the aluminium plate outer ring inner circle

The blunt side is use to hit the other markings of the concentric rings to make it curved in but not as much as the sharp, it will give a more uniformed radius in the middle of the bowl and stretch more evenly unlike the sharp which can bend the aluminium a lot to make the bowl deep and sharp, which doesn't allow to have a uniformed radius. 

Melee Hammer blunt side on the aluminium plate inner rings

After a constant hitting on the aluminium sheet. The result should look like this:

Lumpy but has the hemisphere shape for the bowl

Pro tip: Think before you hit. Hitting with precision and no strength is better than hitting randomly with a lot of strength

4

To remove the lumpy parts of the bowl to give it a smooth finish, an English Wheel needs to be used for achieving this. An English Wheel is similar of hitting the object 100 times which is achieve by pushing and pulling the object backward and forwards as this technique is called Planishing. To get the right radius, you must also check the bottom wheel radius to achieve the perfect curvature.

English Wheel

Done half the bowl result

You can see the left is done by the English Wheel shows no signs of lumpiness which is planish while the right still has some lump. I have achieve this by going back and forth at half way of the bowl, not all the way to reach the result. 

After a lot of planishing, it has given the current result.

5

Even though after planish, sometimes the radius is not right throughout the whole bowl which means it needed more hitting by the melee hammer and keep planishing to get the right radius. The radius that I have finally achieve is r125 shown from the picture below.