Jeffrey Sipprell

May 19, 2006

Synesthesia - DeCafe Opening

We've completed the space (well almost - there's always a punchlist) and tonight's the big opening, headlined by a lecture by Liz Diller. Here's a few final photos - the space looks really fantastic.

Wall/Ceiling Connection
Construction
Ceiling Splice Detail 1
Ceiling Splice Detail 2
Pin Up Board Detail
Door Head/Jamb Detail
Manipulating the Felt
Wall From Above
Overall Ceiling

Final Panorama 1
Final Panorama 2

Posted by jsipprell at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2006

Synesthesia - Construction Photos 4

New batch of photos that show a ton of progress. We are moving very quickly now in anticipation of our completion date this friday. The acoustics are noticably better and people are quite pleased with the aesthetics.

Ceiling Progress 1
Ceiling Progress 2
Felt Production
Wall/Ceiling Connection 1
Wall/Ceiling Connection 2
Wall Layout 1
Wall Detail 1
Wall Detail 2
Wall Panoramic

Posted by jsipprell at 2:47 PM | Comments (1)

April 27, 2006

Synesthesia - Construction Photos 3

On Tuesday we began the installation of the felt in the space. It's going a bit slowly as we're trying to figure a number of things out - specifically at the connection between wall and ceiling. We eventually realized that we're going to need to drill more plates to support all the weight at the top. So, here's a few photos.

Felt Assembly 1
Felt Assembly 2
Felt Assembly 3
Felt Installation 1
Felt Installation 2
Felt Installation 3
Connection 1
Connection 2
Finished Stair

Posted by jsipprell at 11:22 AM | Comments (2)

April 22, 2006

Synesthesia - Construction Photos 2

Another round of photos from the last couple of weeks. The felt order has arrived and we have put most of the clips on to the walls - a big effort by many, including myself, in hammer drilling - which is basically jack hammering a wall with a drill. Definitely requires some time in the sauna afterwards. Putting the clips into the wall was not a walk in the park either - a lot of tapcon heads were snapped off when the hole wasn't exactly right. All you could do was curse and move on. This weekend hopefully marks the end of the drilling, mounting, placing of conduit and sanding of entry stairs (pretty much everything that makes a mess).

I did a mock up of the door jamb area which was mildly successful - we learned a lot from it to deploy in the final layout. Photos below.

Posted by jsipprell at 5:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2006

Synesthesia - Construction Photos 1A

Construction photos taken by a fellow student before we painted it green.

Posted by jsipprell at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2006

Synesthesia - Construction Photos 1

Couple of images from the first week of construction on the school's lecture space. We prepped and painted the space the green accent color that will appear behind the felt - it is really saturated in there right now.

Posted by jsipprell at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Manifold Project - Pre Final

Couple of images of the final object. Still performing final lighting tests, an image of which is shown. Review for the project this thursday.

Overall
Front
Aerial
Connection
Lighting Test

Posted by jsipprell at 4:41 PM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2005

Fabricating a Manifold

This is week two in our fabrication progress on the plastic manifold project, though for myself, it was the first time I got to get a little more hands on with the milling and vacuum forming of the week's model. It really really is a time consuming progress. First of all, we're limited by the fact that we have a 3 axis milling machine, which means you can't have any cuts that go beyond 180 degrees (a 5 axis can handle this as the head will rotate to get under there). So you have to be really rigorous in terms of the geometry you are forming as to eliminate all undercuts - which either means altering the geometry, spreading the piece further open, or splitting it into mulitple pieces (all of which were employed to some extent this week).

The process is somewhat straightforward - you prepare your model in rhino and then export it to surfcam. In surfcam you have to create your rough and finish cuts (the latter of which requires some thought on the tool paths since those lines will show up on your model unless you do something really fine) and then make sure all of the directions are what you want (an arduous task to be frank). Then you output your g-codes and open them on the mill, running each cut separately. Then you have a nice milled piece of foam.

Now you've got to duct tape all of the sides so the vacuum will only suck through the top face - which also requires you to poke holes through the foam (also requiring a certain strategy as these will also manifest themselves on the final form). Then you duct tape the whole thing down on the machine, put your plastic over it in the frame and turn the heater on. After 5-10 minutes it starts to droop and then you drop it on top and flip the vacuum on to suck it into the holes. This then becomes your permanent form (as if you kept using the foam it would degrade extremely fast). Now you've just got to repeat the vacuum forming steps with your clear PETG plastic which gets cast on the ABS plastic rigid form (don't forget to poke holes in that too!). Now you see why we don't sleep much.

As far as the model goes, our primary focus was the connection and how to be able to join multiple layers of plastic that will create a certain degree of pressure on itself without having to resort of any sort of pin or cap connection. I'd say we were half successful in developing a slit and skin condition that allowed for one shell to receive end tabs from various layers. However we were a bit overzealous in the number of layers that the shell could handle and thus are going to have to explore secondary and tertiary connections that will attach subsquent layers.

We've also gone away from having the piece be globe like and established the main form as a half globe with flared ends that will sit on a base. Since there were only two of us in Los Angeles this week (half the class elected to go to Hawaii whereas I did not (more on that later)), we kept the study pretty simple. So issues of light and color are still sitting on the perpetual back burner.

But this stuff is a lot of fun though and nothing beats the thrill of dropping hot melted plastic on to your form and watching it get sucked into all the forms and edges - especially when it's 2 am and you're taking a break from minimal surfaces (also more on that soon). Anyway, below is a plethora of pictures from the week's work in fabrication. And yes I'm well aware of what one of the forms resembles.

CNC Milling
Process Milling 01
Process Milling 02
Process Milling 03
Completed Milling 01
Completed Milling 02

Vacuum Forming
Process Vacuum 01
Process Vacuum 02
Process Vacuum 03
Completed Vacuum 01

Finished Product
Clear Plastic 01
Clear Plastic 02
Clear Plastic 03

Other Student Projects
Project A
Project B

Posted by jsipprell at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)