3D Printing in Stone, or Copy a Sculpture in Rock

An anonymous reader writes "With all this design your own parts and electronics talk lately here on /., what about creating your own stone sculpture on a PC or Copying a Stone Sculpture? You can do that with an outfit called Studio Roc in CA. The New York Times has an interesting article on this marriage of CAD, laser scanning, and rocks. 'Using a huge Italian-made Omag Mill5 five-axis milling machine equipped with a scanner and 30 interchangeable diamond-tipped bits and blades, the Mill5 can record nearly any object in minutes and carve a duplicate in any stone in a few hours.'"

Comments

So now I can have...

[Anonymous Coward]

...my own Venus De Milo RealDoll(tm)?

peeking out from the grave

[i621148]

now you can have your head scanned and have a really scare tombstone !!! :)

My Sculpture!

[toetagger1]

I wonder if that machine could make a life-sized sculputure of myself? Where shall I put it?

Re:My Sculpture!

[Smidge204]

Use it as a stand-in for any meetings you have to go to, of course!

=Smidge=

A Slashdot dream come true

[Anonymous Coward]

So there you are, kids. You can now really have Natalie Portman petrified.

Which she probably already is...

Re:A Slashdot dream come true

[Alranor]

And then smash her up with a hammer, warm in an oven for a few hours and have your very own genuine Natalie Portman Hot Grit

Pick it up at Staples....

[Himring]

what about creating your own stone sculpture? ...'Using a huge Italian-made Omag Mill5 five-axis milling machine

Sounds great! I'm supposing Staples will have the huge Italian-made Omag Mill5 five-axis milling machine....

Re:Pick it up at Staples....

[Alien Being]

But the replacement tools will only be sold by Lexmark as DRM protected cartridges.

Nice

[nycsubway]

Oh, this is nice, especially for restoring old buildings. If an artist can recreate a plaster mold, they can get a stone copy. That could save a lot of time in restoration.

This could also have potential in restoring wood carvings, assuming the machine can mill wood.

Re:Nice

[RPI Geek]

If the machine can mill stone, it can mill wood. I've done it before, but you do have to be careful about the feedrate and small features or else you run the risk of splintering the wood.

I don't see how it could restore a wood carving though...

Re:Nice

[Wierd Willy]

Jeezuz people, what kind of machinists are you? I have milled wood, alabaster, graphite and other ultra-soft materials with CNC mills and lathes hundreds of times, even soft pine. You need high spindle speeds and low feed rates and razor sharp tools. Milling, you use low angle 2 flute endmills exclusively. Lathe nothing but cobalt steel cutters ground to a knife edge, no greater than 60 degrees.

Typically, most modern mills have factory maximum spindle speed of 10,000 RPM. There are doublers and triplers and beyond that bolt right up to the spindle and its possible to get spindle speeds with these devices up to 100,000 RPM. High pressure air on the cutter keeps the flutes clear as liquid coolant can't be used because it damages the peice. It creates a lot of dust, but a good vaccuum system keeps that down to tolerable levels.

I wonder...

[lankiveil]

I wonder how long it's going to be before someone figures out how to use this wonderful new technology for smut?

Soon on P2P

[t_allardyce]

Oh great, get ready for a host of law-suits as Da Vinci comes back from the dead to sew 'Sculpture Pirates' copying ancient IP.

Can't resist...

[agraupe]

It seems so useless, but yet I am compelled to get one. Such is the /. way

Family albums

[jstave]

Just think how weird one could get with this. Instead of bronzing the baby's shoes, you can make multiple, lifesized statues of them as they grow up.

The SMAA will not like this

[denis-The-menace]

The Stone Masson Association of America will not stand for such a thing. They will soon lobby for a DMCA-like legislation to outlaw progress like this.

Re:The SMAA will not like this

[pubjames]

The Stone Masson Association of America will not stand for such a thing. They will soon lobby for a DMCA-like legislation to outlaw progress like this.

You joke about this, but this is exactly what happened with industries in the past - laws have been passed so that people can continue profitting from them when new technologies have threatened people's livelyhoods.

Consider - once upon a time, if you were a story teller, the way you would make more money was by visiting towns and telling your stories, and people would pay you for them, presumably the better ones would get a bigger audience and so earn more. But you wouldn't get rich by it. Then the printing press came along, which had the potential to rob storytellers of their livelyhood. So we made laws such that the original storyteller could make money on every copy of his work sold.

Similarly, if you were a musician a few hundred years ago, the only way you could make money was by playing live. Then recorded music came along - this had the potential to rob musicians of their income - they were now only needed to play the music once, and the a recording to be listened to again and again. So again, laws were made so that musicians could maintain their income.

In the past, artists and composers were comissioned by weathly people to do original artworks for them. Now they can profit from reproductions of their works, so they don't need the wealthy patrons. But only because we have made laws that allow that.

Because someone had to say it

[plover]

How much wood would a stone mill mill if a stone mill could mill wood?

Re:Question on the cutting

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know why they use a diamond tipped cutter instead of a laser cutter?

Probably because the frickin' sharks demanded better benefits.

Re:Question on the cutting

[Anonymous Coward]

Laser cutting (or abrasive waterjet) is usually for flat items like sheetmetal where you make the cut all the way through the material. If you need to make a partial cut, a mechanical device is your only choice.

Re:Question on the cutting

[RPI Geek]

There's a few reasons.

Conventional millers are cheaper.

Lasers can't get inside features like hollowed-out areas (they can't control depth as well because they don't know the exact material properties inside the stone, and if it hit an unexpected soft spot, oops! there goes the whole thing.

A laser cutter would use much more energy to burn the material away than a conventional mill uses to just chip it.

Hope this helps.

Re:Question on the cutting

[AKAImBatman]

It seems that Laser Engraving equipment does exist and can cut Marble without problem. Why would a laser need to perform a plunge cut? (Not that there aren't reasons, I just don't know them.)

Free Sculpture Foundation

[Stiletto]

Friday, July 23, 4004
NEW YORK (AP) - A new organization has been created to promote the copying and redistribution of stone sculptures. Calling itself the Free Sculpture Foundation, or FSF, the group aims to "free" works of art which until now have been "hoarded" by stone copyrighters.

"How can you copyright a piece of rock?? It's the earth, man!" Hippie and founder Richard Stoneman said he got his idea from a recent Slashdot post, "3D Printing in Stone, or Copy a Sculpture in Rock". Great works such as those by Michelangelo will be among his first projects.

Industry groups are not impressed. Chiseled Sales, Inc. spokeswoman Hillary Rocken announced the formation of a trade group opposed to Mr. Stoneman's band of fredom fighters. The Rock Is Available Association, or RIAA is set to lobby government officials to crack down on these "rock robbers". "The talented sculpturers we represent are losing hard earned profits by these thieves. Stone may come from the earth, but that shouldn't stop us from selling it," Rocken said in a prepared statement.

The debate is not likely to go away any time soon. Shortly after the formation of the FSF, a new rival group was formed, calling itself the Open Stone movement. President Erock S Raymond called for a meeting of the minds between business and stone consumers, noting the benefits of opening up the hardware "blueprints" to great works of art.

Re:Free Sculpture Foundation

[whimdot]

To protect intellectual property they might have to chip the originals.

DRM?

[thesp]

Does this mean statues will now come equipped with DRM? If this machine can make Venus de Milo knockoffs with arbitrary precision, it can save the data it uses to carve. Then put that datafile on a P2P, and anyone with a statue burner will be able to make bootleg Venuses! I'm sure the art industry is already getting worried!

Record nearly any object...

[mikael]

the Mill5 can record nearly any object in minutes and carve a duplicate in any stone in a few hours.'

If it can duplicate CD's and DVD's, the RIAA are going to be annoyed.

Re:in any stone?

[JediTrainer]

maybe use that huge 182 carat diamond they found in Guinea a couple days ago.

Shh... don't spoil it. Everyone's still waiting for the /. article about that.

This isn't 3D printing, sorry

[panurge]

You need a block of stone in the first place, from which you remove stuff. It's exactly the same as standard sculpture except that instead of apprentices, laborers and great big stone saws, they're using a milling machine to get a high quality rough. And (RTFA) this does produce a rough: hand finishing is required, just as special finishing is required with the output of most machine tools. The comments this is getting suggest to me that too many people nowadays don't have a clue about manufacturing - and we in the West will surely regret this one day.

Printing is a process that involves ADDING material to a substrate, not taking it away.

So yes, it's a nice application of one of those multi-axis machine tools the Italians do so well, but it's basically the same as any die-sinking process.

Of course it would be able to...

[cnelzie]

...you could also get that done at virtually most protoype machine shops across the US.

If they have laser scan capable CMMs (That's Coordinate Measuring Machines), just about any 5-Axis Vertical Milling Machine and some decent machine operators it can be done.

Heck, you could even have that milled out of high-quality Aircraft Aluminum, like a 7000-series. You could also go with tooling steel, like Cold Drawn 1018 Carbon Steel or S-7 Tooling Steel...

None of this is really new. The technology has been around for at least 10 years, from the laser scanning to the 5-Axis Mills.

great power for good or for awesome

[darksaber]

Wouldn't you love for your girlfriend (mythical or otherwise) to pose naked for this?

"They can take a twelve-inch piece and in less than a week we'll have it twelve feet," said Jon Lash, director of the institute's Digital Atelier division. "Then they'll come in and do the final manipulation of the surface."

and then again, you could pose and give her something to keep her company while you are away... perhaps with some editing, but you don't want her to prefer it to the real thing, do you?

DIY

[Coupons]

This is lovely, but beyond the means of the average /.er.

With a little ingenuity and, say, $100,000 you can build your own and save a bundle.

McRae and Sons Inc., the last US paint brush handle factory, builds their own 4 axis 3D wood carving machines for considerably less. The same principles can be applied to carving stone.

McRae's machines rely on Actek Inc. motion controllers, though manufacturers abound. You might be surprised how many are amenable to working with amatures.

Check eBay - no kidding - for cheap machines that can be canibalized or restored.

Re:DIY

[Solder Fumes]

CNC can be had for much, much cheaper than $100,000. I built my own little CNC machine (bottom of page) from scratch for less than $250. That's not going to mill stone (very fast, anyway) but you can get a full-size Bridgeport or some Japanese mill for under $2,000 in some cases. For another $1,000 or less, and using the mill to build its own parts, you can retrofit the Bridgeport with servo or stepper drives, and use an obsolete desktop computer to control it using free software. Shops also turn over equipment like CNC machines pretty often, in order to keep up with everyone else. An expensive machine pays for itself many times over before it becomes obsolete. You may be able to find an older CNC mill, ready to run, for less than $5,000. I happen to know of one that, if I ever get the space, could be had for under $2,000. For all the information you need, try the CAD CAM EDM DRO Yahoo Group.

Stone Tablets Redux

[VernonNemitz]

Oh, boy! Now we can start preserving all of today's data in really long-lasting form! They should start with instructions of how to build and program one of these machines!

This could revolutionise the garden gnome industry

[Binarysleeper]

If you could scale down models it would be fantastic. Just imagine the heights of tackyness that could be reached in gardens all over the world!

"the West will surely regret this"?

[nusratt]

"The comments this is getting suggest to me that too many people nowadays don't have a clue about manufacturing - and we in the West will surely regret this one day."

Why will we regret having no manufacturing skills?
After all, none of the highly-skilled manufacturing *jobs* will be *here* anyhow.

can they fix Moses' problem?

[nusratt]

"Hear me! Oh, Hear me! All pay heed! The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen [CRASH]...Oy! ten, ten commandments for all to obey! "

She's got a heart of stone

[seniorcoder]

Maybe I can use it to carve my name upon my ex-girlfriend's heart. She left me after 3 years. She said I spend too much time in front of a computer. She wouldn't open the electronic cards I sent her. She's blocked me on AIM. My emails are bouncing. I cannot even ping her anymore. Oh Joyce, forgive me.

Now we just need

[Cnik70]

Something that copies Scissors and we'll be set!

Milling Machines and sculptures

[jrjud]

Duplicating sculptures by methods other than carving directly into stone is nothing new - and milling machines are certainly not a new technology either.

Even Rodin quite often started his work in clay. He sent the original plaster to a person who used a pointing machine invented by Nicolas Gatteaux to do the rudimentary stone carving.

As for milling machines, they have been around forever and come in all sizes and work with all kinds of materials. This one is really good, and the CNC software runs on Linux: http://www.sherline.com/mill.htm

It can be a neat 3D printer, but you need to get versed in machining, which can be very time consuming - especially if you use metal. You can use foam, wood, and lots of different materials.

Re:Question on the cutting

[Wierd Willy]

Diamond cutters are the hardest cutters possible. typically, the diamond tips on the cutting edges will maintain their sharpness with low shear angles in highly friable materials such as stone or graphite. This is why spindle speeds would have to be very high to reduce actual impact pressures on the cutting edges themselves.

Hardness is inversely purportional to shear strength. The harder the material of the peice, the smaller the chipload allowance on the cutter. The harder the cutter, the higher spindle speeds you can run. As long as the cutter stays below its heat tolerance, it will maintain its edge.

Materials like graphite, marble and limestone are easily machined with spindle speeds around 20,000-25,000 RPM with diamond cutters. But the feed rate has to be low in order to get a surface finish within tolerance. Something like Granite, being mostly quartz would have to be machined at over 30,000 RPM with extremely low feed rates. This is extremely difficult as the hardness of the material of the workpeice and the hardness of the material of the cutter are approaching equilibrium. The heat tolerance just isn't there.

Lasers are only really good for cutting blanks out of flat materials, they dont leave a very good surface finish and they tend to change the properties of the material being machined. You can get much better results for this with an abrasive waterjet cutter. Such machine tools are only good for cutting in straight lines.

Other 3D printing firms...

[CoffeeDregs]

Clever.

Also check out:
http://www.precisionlaserart.com - uses lasers to make small fractures in glass;
http://www.prometal.com - uses metal powder to create arbitrary 3D forms;
http://bathsheba.com - artist who uses the above forms;

Note: I've used PrecisionLaserArt for some artwork and had a good experience, so I'm biased...

My crown is made similarly

[duanechamblee]

This is old news AFAIK... I've got a ceramic crown that was created in a machine sitting next to me while I waited. Pretty cool and a practical use of the existing technology. http://www.cereconline.com/ecomaXL/index.php?site= Cerec_PatientInfo