Melting a lot of plastic here at KautzCraft. It’s called 3D printing.
It’s kept me away from my other crafts. Primarily because it is mostly a low manual labor, easy, and relatively self-contained process of making things.
Most of the creative work for me in 3D printing is the design drawings I produce with CAD computer software – Usually Autodesk Fusion and Onshape.
All 3D printers require a 3D drawing as the starting point. Usually a Stereolithography (STL) file produced with CAD but some slicers can use other drawing formats and other drawing systems.
A slicer is software that converts the 3D drawing into code (gcode) that the printer machine follows to build a printed object. The machine totally does the long (but not manual labor) process of the actual printing.
The total process is: Draw it – Print it – Assemble components if necessary. Some creators add a hand painting finial stage if they are making (usually) painted miniature figures. Painting does require more use of artistic manual skills.
Anxiety and Guilt
I usually suppress these feelings as I enjoy the creativity of making just about anything from scratch. But I have made a huge amount of what I lovingly call Plastic Junque in the last 9 years of 3D printing. Actually an overwhelming amount.
I do miss the high intrinsic value and product quality of lost wax casting silver and non precious metals. (BTW – Gold has not been one of my casting desires ($$))
Carving wax can be a purely manual (hand) effort or a precise CNC machine milling (carving) operation. Even with machine carving a lot of hand work is still required to produce a finished LWC item.
I call it “Putting one’s soul into the work.” It’s from the physical hand labor effort needed to produce the tangible item.
For me there is not much “soul” from a plastic part that almost unattended pops off the build plate after hours of self operation. No input from the craftsperson artist.
Soul. Call it the “artist touch” if you want.
For me the art in 3D printing is when I design. Printing a stock STL (obtained from the internet) design is more a “collecting” hobby. Someone else’s art. I am only a machine operator and assembler when doing that. A factory machine operator job.
Looking Ahead
Maybe it’s more “Looking Back.”
I say and think this a lot. “I’d like to get back to my creative art that has more soul.”
For me, that most likely involves moving back to the lost wax casting process I throughly enjoy.
Not everything LWC (Lost Wax Cast) must be jewelry.
I have one pen-pal friend in Michigan who would love for me to be casting metal parts for his pen making hobby.
One limiting factor is how large an item I want to make. I don’t have a desire to be a full fledged metal foundry, involving hefty sand casting and multi section sand molds.
Perfectly happy with investment flask casting. However, not making any rules about (any) other crafting processes.
Living in a purely residential (HOA) development. So I have to stay relatively low-key with external appearance.
Don’t need/want a booming business. Just a fun hobby making stuff.
3D printing can definitely be used for master model production. Special master model burnable casting 3D print resins exist and PLA has been used. I have already experimented with both. So 3D printing doesn’t die. – Ha!
I’ll post more about my “Soul Trip” craft making dreaming if I can get off my duff and take real action Less dreaming, more action! ~ Dan
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