Debra’s Fashions of Distinction - Scratch Build Using 3D and Laser

[Jim Donovan]

The second and third floors are where the actual dress design, fabric cutting and sewing will happen so they will be much plainer then what is seen on the first floor. It is much like the old joke of the devil convincing a guy that hell isn't so bad, showing him golf courses, beautiful woman, white beaches and so on, when he he chooses hell over heaven he finds himself in hades as it really is, when he says it it not what he was shown the devil says, 'oh that was the marketing department, this is operations'.

I started with the floor that will also be the ceiling for the first floor. Using the Lightburn program I designed various length floor boards, added cracks, marbling and even nail holes to create a pattern the laser could emboss into the 3 mill basswood and then cut out the needed shape. Here is how the design looks in the program:


It looks rather like a mess but if you blow up the photo you can see the individual boards. The various colors tell the laser how fast to cut, what power setting to use for that color and how many passes to make. You can see the rates and color chart on the upper right side, everything is in seconds and metric. There are six separate board designs placed randomly and then cut and pasted to duplicate the design.

The ceiling side has a picture design I found of a European church ceiling and printed it on 12 x 12 cardstock using the Cameo print/cutter and a Cannon printer.For the parts of the ceiling that are the back warehouse and front walkway I used a photo copy of the wood cut design used for the floor



And here is how it turned out. Not Monster Modeling but good enough for what I am doing:



 

[Jim Donovan]

The walls of the second floor are made the same way as the first, 3mm birchwood plywood with 1/32 thick Monster Modeling brick. I designed the second floor windows to be made with the laser cutter and have the mullins on both sides with the glass in the middle.If anything it was easier to make the windows from basswood then using the resin printer. The glue holds better to the wood. The column design was carried through like on the first floor and it appears the nesting I was looking for will work just fine. Here in photos is the process and progress. You will notice the column colors are changing. I did not like the first color and I still not sure if I like this new version, definitely will need to be toned down some.



Laser set up to cut out walls.



Laser having just cut out walls from Monster Modeling American Aged Brick Sheet



3mm birchwood plywood and brick sheet ready to be glued together.



Parts glued together using 3M 468 double sided tape.



Wood frames cut out and ready to be made windows for front wall. Brick has been 'painted' using rust-red dry pigment and sand grout (scenic glue and wet water) used to fill in mordor lines.



Windows in and walls glued to floor.



Second floor together with most columns in place. End columns need to be painted before attaching to wall. That is progress for tonight hope you like it so far.

Jim

[GPdemayo]

Looking good Jim.....fascinating to watch it come together. 

[Janbouli]

What Greg said , I so like what you're doing and showing us how you work.

[deemery]

Definitely an unique structure with an interesting use of the laser cutter along with the Monster brick panels.

dave

[Jim Donovan]

Looking good Jim.....fascinating to watch it come together. 

Thanks Greg

Hopefully I will have something better to show soon.

[Jim Donovan]

What Greg said , I so like what you're doing and showing us how you work.

Thanks Jan

Appreciate you following along.

[Jim Donovan]

Definitely a unique structure with an interesting use of the laser cutter along with the Monster brick panels.

dave

Thanks Dave;

I hope to show better progress soon

[Jim Donovan]

In the near future I will catch up how I got here but I thought I'd show where I am as of tonight. Lots of designing, laser parts, lots of  3D parts and modifications as I go to the original idea. Still it is starting to look like a building.

[GPdemayo]

As promised, it keeps getting better.....

[Jim Donovan]

Well I finally have some time to catch this project up to date. As you saw from the previous photo, the building is coming along. Today I was able to make significant progress as well so let's catch up:

First a cautionary tale. 3D printers are precision tools that operate by utilizing some of the amazing advancements in electronics and IT. They need to be treated with care, kept clean and most importantly can not have water (or the liquid resin) get in contact with the electronics located under the resin vat. Unfortunately, and frankly I am not sure how, I allowed resin to seep into the guts of the printer where it shorted out the mother board destroying the electronics. The Saturn 2 was a $329 investment that I did not take proper care of and so like any tool it broke. To keep the project going I brought out my Mars 2 printer I still kept in storage, cleaned it up and continued on, a lesson learned. 

The Mars 2 is a good beginner machine but there have been many advancements since I bought it three years ago so I decided to indulge myself and buy a state of the art hobby grade 3D printer. Meet the Anycubic Mono 5s Pro. It has similar size abilities as the Saturn 2 but uses a 14.4K LED UV light plate for resin hardening up from the 6K UV light the Saturn 2 had. It has built in self leveling, an on-board heater to improve the print process and the ability to create small details significantly better then any printer I have used. It just arrived and today was the first chance I had to use it. It produced the third floor facade columns in half the time the Mars 2 was able to and the details are simply amazing. Overkill for the columns but will extremely useful when I get to interior detailing.

[Jim Donovan]

The design of the third floor varies from the second floor by having three bay window areas in the front and does not have the wood extension for warehousing in the back as the first two floors have. The design can be seen in the CAD photo I posted as well as the photo. The bay windows are made by first designing and printing a 'frame' that will glue into the wall opening provided for when I laser cut the front wall.

The above photo shows this 3D printed frame still on its supports.

[Jim Donovan]

The arch windows and bay window 'gingerbread' was cut out of 1 mm thick basswood (which gives a scale thickness of about 3.42 inches using the laser. The gingerbread was painted yellow sierra using Vallejo paint and the windows were painted moss green. Using the 'sandwich' technique I explained before I used clover .006 glass for the windows. As thee are small some of the glass was still showing on the outside of the window seams.  I was able to simply use an emery board to sand off the excess glass without causing it to crack. The frames were spray painted gray primer then spanish moss greeen. I used 560 canopy glue to fix the woodwork and windows to the frame. Finally. I used some strip slate roofing I still had from a previous project. I first covered the roofs with 3M 468 sheet 2 sided tape and then applied the shingles. For the corners I cut individual tiles in half and laid them end to end up the corner rather then attempting to overlap them like the individual rows. I found the look appeared more natural and will be doing this method from now on. They were glued in place using a dab of canopy glue.




And here is how the front wall looked when completed.

[Jim Donovan]

The back wall of the 3rd floor has modified tilt windows I designed previously for the  Boyers Packaging project. Here I simply shrunk the windows to about 4 x 4, and used the 'sandwich' method to insert glass (microscope slide cover glass as it is less expensive and the windows are simple squares). I still have a couple more to make but the photo gives you a good look of how it will appear as well has the design of the back being much more 'production' oriented then the rest of the building.

You'll notice the window panes appear dirty and a couple are broken. I had left some of the resin dust on the window frame after sanding to create this look of a 'working' building.

[Jim Donovan]

Both sides of the third floor were made much like the second floor so nothing interesting to report for those parts. However the roof does show a lot. The railing all around the roof was made using a CAD created design based on the building I am using as a reference. located in Canada at 1 Princess Ave it was built in 1887:


Over the years it was updated and looked like this when we saw it:

I am incorporating the roof line of the 1887 version and the firescapes of the current version in this model.