Week 1 - Jewelry 3 - Progress on Die Forming

Today I set out with two goals:

1. To break one
2. To bottom out on the die

I am happy to say I accomplished both. I know it sounds crazy, but I wanted to see what the limit of the die was and how far I could push it until is caved under the pressure (literally!).  I learned a lot today in doing this and so far I will say I am not done, no where from it for my samples. I want to experiment with some textures on them and I would like to see what happens with a pierced prior to forming piece which I will get into when I get a little more reliable forms happening. So far, 7 out of the 8 forms survive. The one that I broke and bottomed out were the same and it was interesting getting it out, but it was so cool to see where it literally ripped metal.

Now that I know the breaking point and the stress points that need more filing, I am thinking the next few rounds might go better. So far I have pushed them to a depth of 12mm out of 20mm making me a little over halfway on two of them. I want to continue to push these forms to their limit (hopefully without breaking) for Tuesday.

In other news, I need to get some more muscles to roll print. It wasn't that it was too hard to turn, it just makes your muscles ache a bit after you do it for too long. I hope my 22 ga. copper arrives soon! Went through a ton of metal today and I loved it!

Results:

#1 This was the first one that I did, and it is the first in rotation. After about 5 different runs through the press, it reached a height of about 10mm. This is some movement, but I found better results with slightly higher pressure in some of the ones that will follow especially 4 and 6. They were some of the ones I put a bit more refined measurements of pressure into. 

#2- This is the winner of the evening! It cracked after 5 rounds of pressure. When I talked to Brianna before I started she showed me where her forms broke. This will really help me with the rest of mine. I can see here the stress points along the backside and the corner. I honestly did not expect it to break in these locations and I am really glad I went through with my plans to take one to the point of being destroyed. I also love that when it broke it bottomed out the back of the piece. It creates points for me to go back and fix the locations of the breakage. I can see where it started in both cracks, was a point of the die where the metal was possibly a bit sharper then in other places. I will go back in before I finish and file those down a bit so they are maybe not so sharp.  An interesting aspect of this is it gave me my measurement for the maximum depth of the die to be about 22mm from the bottom edge of the metal to the top of the curve. 

The full set so far of the ones that I have pressed enough to start making something. I want to play with some piercing, roll printing and etching for a few more samples. I think from the notes I have up to this point of about half depth that I can fix the die and continue to make these go to their limit of their depth. I have found the safe range to make them lower without breaking is between 2000-4500psi and 80 durometer before small stress points begin to form. 

#4 at around 12mm depth.

#6 around 11/12mm in height. About halfway to the height I think it can reach.

#5 Still in the die. It is getting there!

Die starting to show some signs of wear and needs some repairs. I noticed it started to shift the more I used it. For my actual piece I will have to find a better way to secure the plates then tape. Also, the more I used it, the tape would split into these really neat patterns.

So, I know what I have to do and as soon as I can get in the studio again, I will push them a little farther.