[Odin]

I've got (what I think) is an odd & difficult design ? for ya.

Looking at Bathsheba Grossman's designs with ProMetal Direct metal 3d printing, I thought up something I'd like to make.

I am still a total amateur when it comes to CAD design, but I have an idea. It involves a spherical shell, with a continuous cut-out design covering the entire thing, like latticework. If you're wondering what it's for, it's a custom censer (I burn a lot of incense, it helps me design).

The idea is to somehow wrap a flat, tiled design around a sphere completely, and there are 2 parts to the tiled design, a positive & a negative. The positive obviously stays behind, and makes up the skeletal "shell" of the sphere. The negative is just that- cut out. Simple, right?

Here's the hard part- the design is based of a simple, traditional Japanese folk pattern called "sayagata". See attachments. I have analyzed the design, and come up with the single part that tiles to create the pattern, and defined it mathematically by proportions, so that I can create this design at any size, by simply tiling the single drawn main shape.

Basically, you'll understand what I want to make by seeing the 2nd attachment, Example. I want a lace-like metal shell where the green-marble looking part in that picture would be. The inside is hollow. Just a spherical, lace-like shell.

I'd like to put the center of one of the "X" points both at the top & bottom centers of my sphere.

That's my design. I'd cut it in half, and mount gimbals inside for the incense holder. I want all the negative space (the white in the design, between the black lines) to be the same width all around the sphere on the OUTSIDE.

MY QUESTION IS: how the hell do I make this? I have 2 ideas:

1. Somehow "wrap" this design into a sphere shape, and send it to be printed by ProMetal. I don't think it's a physically impossible shape.

2. Make a simple die shape out of the main pattern, and a negative block to hold it in (with the bottom of the block contoured to a sphere the diameter I will use), then hand press this against a hard wax shell I could make around a craft foam sphere. I gradually stamp through the wax, into the sphere underneath, and when I'm done, I use a special chemical to eat away the foam sphere underneath, leaving my spherical lace shell behind. I then send the hard shell out *CAREFULLY* to be lost-wax cast in metal, no CAD involved.


Any ideas? It seems so simple as an idea, but the route to MAKING the damn thing is confusing the hell out of me. Also, can the flat design really be wrapped in any way around a sphere without distorting the sizes of it's design parts?? I'm thinking it can't..

I know this is a strange question, but look at guilloche nested spheres that old craft turners have made- some others have done similar things, just not with a linear pattern like mine.

-Odin