Hi Richard,
Watched the video, mokume gane means wood grain. That was
laminated metal, no pattern related to what I would consider
mokume.
They weren’t trying to make mokume. Never said they were. My point
was simply that they’d gotten the hard part done without even
meaning to.
Have you ever seen a raw, unpatterned mokume billet? It’s just
laminated metal until you pattern it. Looks much like that
copper/aluminum billet in the picture.
Having gotten the bonding done in materials specifically chosen to
be hard to bond, getting it to make a pattern would be child’s play.
(Ridiculously expensive child’s play, but feasible.)
The reason I said let's see CAD CAM duplicate mokume is that
someone said that CAD CAM could produce any design, and I was,
well, just trying to point out that CAD CAM does have limitations.
No kidding. Never said it didn’t. It has loads of limitations, but
they frequently aren’t where people think they are.
The point I was making when I said (originally) that CAD could
reproduce any design is that a decent CAD package can reproduce
any design.in a digital format, in the computer’s memory. Getting it
out into the real world requires a CAM system, and those have
boatloads of limitations.
(CAD and CAM are not synonymous. The capabilities of the CAD package
may be distinctly different than the capabilities of the CAM
package, or the output system. Each machine has different kinds of
forms and objects that it handles best. Just because you can draw
the thing on the computer doesn’t mean that you can just hit ‘print’
and get a good copy in your hand.)
Also, there are questions of time and efficiency. Dan (or someone)
mentioned tweaking the ‘inhuman’ perfection of CAD system symmetry to
simulate the imprecisions left by hand work. Yes, pure CAD generated
forms tend to be inhumanly precise, which can be a give-away, for
those who care. On the other hand, it is possible to go in and
‘de-tune’ the forms to simulate hand work. Equally, you can use very
hi-res laser scanners to exactly import the dimensions of a physical
piece, wobblies and all. How much time ($$$) you spend making the CAD
model look ‘hand made’ is up to you, but the serious systems will
model whatever form you want, down to whatever level of accuracy you
desire. I normally model parts to 5 places. (0.00001") The machines I
use won’t hold that, but it’s better to have the data than not.
Weirdly enough, ‘fudging’ edges and symmetry to make it imperfect is
a lot harder and more time-consuming than creating perfect Platonic
forms. Which is why it usually goes by the boards. The customer
expects perfection, why spend more money not giving it to them?
I realized that this discussion has been between me, a small
independent retail store owner, a teacher of CAD CAM, and someone
who uses the process to produce a line that is basically a two
dimensional line of Celtic designs, something CAD CAM is perfect
for.
I’m not sure exactly who you’re talking about here, the punctuation
puzzles me.
That said, I expect the “2D Celtic” would be some of my old stuff.
Hate to say this, but those were the bottom end of my commercial
line, 20 years ago. I leave the pictures up because periodically,
people give me money for them, without me having to put any effort
into marketing. Equally, there’s no real CAD/CAM in them:
photo-etched masters, hand engraved to clean them up, molded, cast,
findings soldered on, then mass finished. Entirely traditional
jewelry store kind of work.
There’s very little CAD/CAM work anywhere on the portfolio page you
had to be looking at to find those. Plenty of hollowware, raising
and forged reactives, even a bit of mokume, but very little CAD.
Examples of my work can be seen on my Facebook page, under photos,
Wall photos section.
The real CAD/CAM work I do is probably on your bench. Have a Knew
Concepts saw? Then you have a piece of my CAD/CAM work already.
I do all the CNC programming and part development for all the KC
lines, as well as the Eid-Longhi Anticlastic stakes that I produce
under my own banner. (Eisenring Entp.) (As well as most of the actual
machining.) I decided to keep using this account (Alberic) when I’m
being me, personally, as I’d been on Orchid for years prior to
teaming up with Lee. I use a different account ‘brian at knewconcepts
dot com’ when I’m talking officially, for Knew Concepts. Thus the
occasional confusion, but it seemed the best way to keep my various
hats on straight. I try not to talk about Knew Concepts when it’s not
clear who I am, but this seemed to be a good point to clear any
confusion.
Regards,
Brian Meek
(of the many hats.)