Art & Engineering, they go hand in hand for me

[twoartistic]

Hi, it has been awhile since I posted any work so I put together a video on animoto.com. Then promptly posted it in the wrong forum yesterday (My apologies to the sign makers.)

Animoto - Shane McKenna Engineer - Designer - Artist - Craftsman

I work in multiple programs. Mostly Solidworks, Artcam, sketchup, and sketchyphyisics (it is my favorite new toy). The animations in the video are a little choppy and pixelated due to the compression software animoto uses, but hey what do you expect for doing it on the cheap.

I designed, engineered, created everything in the video. Even the title blocks where modeled in various CAD/CAM software. A little photoshop touch up, and color augmentation is used as well. I have a shop where I built all the furniture. I also designed and built my 5ft x 10ft servo powered 4 axis CNC that I use to make prototypes and furniture parts, as well as molds. I have made resin molds, thermoforming molds, pressure laminating molds, etc.

If you like my work, post a comment or even better hit the FB link on the animoto page to share it.

It wouldn't hurt my feelings to get some more work in the pipeline. What they say about starving artists is certainly true these days. Sadly for those of us afflicted with the need to create, hard times reduces the "need" of others to acquire those creations.

[twoartistic]

Some of you must have posted my video on your FB. It has been watched 90 times in the last 9 days. I really appreciate you doing that. I even got one call. It didn't turn into a job, but did give each of us a little more working knowledge as we shared some of the technologies we use to accomplish our work.

CNCzone is great! Thanks again guys.

[old-truck-body]

Twoartistic your work is amazing. I don't know if you remember me, I worked with Scott C. You helped us out with a conveyor project at HP many years ago. I had the 55 Chevy truck that you spent some time looking over. Scott sent me a link so I could see your work. I am so glad that he did, I had no idea you did this kind of work. Every time I saw you, you were wearing coveralls, and covered in grease and dirt. Do you still find time to build equipment? I always respected the extra effort and integrity you brought to our project. From the projects on your video, you have only added to those qualities.

I wish I had the budget, I would hand you the keys to my house, and leave you to dream up whatever you wanted, just to see what you would come up with.

If you ever get back to Boise come look us up. Sadly, the old brown 55 had to go, but I think you would like the project I'm working on now. I have moved on from HP, but I will certainly pass your name on to our engineering manager if we have any work come up that we need some extra help on.

It is great to make a connection again, and good luck to you.

[Arquibaldo]

Dear Mr. McKenna

Sir, you're a great engineer and a great artist - actually, this is a pleonasm:
great engineering is mathematics+physics+a great dose of art. Just look
at a SR71 - a work of art made into an airplane.

Wouldn't you throw a bone at us mere mortals and make available the G-code
for one of your simpler carvings, so that we could test our CNC routers with
a real work of art instead of those boring nameplates for the door of a kid's
room... just wishing.

Nelson

[twoartistic]

Dear Mr. McKenna

Wouldn't you throw a bone at us mere mortals and make available the G-code
for one of your simpler carvings, so that we could test our CNC routers with
a real work of art instead of those boring nameplates for the door of a kid's
room... just wishing.

Nelson

Thank you for your compliments, but I know that I am among the mortals myself. I do have an artistic aptitude, however it is an unrelenting passion to master my craft that has taken me the rest of the way. With passion, it becomes possible to devote the time, overcome the pain and set the goals required to master ones craft.

I could probably dig up some interesting code. I am on the road for a few days, but could get something together when I get back home. I have a bad habit of not keeping my one-of-a-kind projects organized. Once they are successfully completed, it is on to the next. I end up saving them in bulk, in my backup file. Kind of like digging around in the junk drawer to find them again. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time remembering what I named a file last week. So I only keep my open projects in my working folder, then they get retired into my backup computer.

I have a texture file I created that looks somewhat like rippled sand patterns in a dry wash. It is large enough to be used as a dresser front, raised door panel, or a small headboard. As I recall, it is about 1.25" elevation from the lowest elevation to the crown. It is only the texture. I used the file to shape a sample door, using a pre cut panel that already had the tongues machined into it. You would have to do the rest of the prep. to make something useful. Would that interest you?

I usually rough out with a 3 deg. tapered .0625"/.125" radius round nose bit at between .1-.05 inch step over. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Depending on what I am going to do with it after. If I hand carve after, I use really rough step over settings, just to get most of the material out. If it is an elegant molding that is mostly going to be finished smooth, I use finer settings. I prefer to use hand gouges, and furniture scrapers to clean up the fine work.

[Arquibaldo]

Dear Mr. McKenna:

Thank you so much for your kind reply.

I'm certainly interested in your offer: You could post a link here or PM me if
you prefer

Nelson

[Walky]

I do have an artistic aptitude, however it is an unrelenting passion to master my craft that has taken me the rest of the way. With passion, it becomes possible to devote the time, overcome the pain and set the goals required to master ones craft.

It's great to see people with artistic tendencies that still manage to keep their feet on the ground. It's a rare virtue and in my opinion it gives an extra value to your work (which is amazing, BTW).

After some years at fine arts school I got really sick of being around a bunch of people who believed themselves to be the reincarnation of Rembrandt (first year is full of those), and another bunch of "romantics" that was more interested in being called artists instead of actually doing what they love, do it the best they can, and enjoy it.

I hate the word "artist", and hate being called like that. I just do what I love and put my heart into it, whatever it is. I haven't done a single painting in years, I just stopped from the moment I discovered CNC; why? because I discovered that I enjoy building machines and stuff with these machines more than I enjoy painting, and what's life good for if you don't enjoy it as much as you can?. Why do people call art a passion and engineering a job, while they both have a little of each? For me, there's little to no difference between them.

Cheers for doing what you love and enjoying it!