Orbital Propot

Hello Everyone. It feels as though I have been in hiding for the last six months, but here I am with proof of life and to share the first of many projects I have been working on all this time.

To fill in those of you who have not yet heard. Last year I was invited to participate in a special session of the Haystack Mount School of Craft put on by a group from MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. After this retreat, I was then invited by Professor Neil Gershenfeld to become a visiting artist researcher at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. Since January, I have been traveling to Cambridge for one week each month to create and experiment with machine tools and CAM workflows that have remained well beyond my reach within my own humble studio practice. 

While at CBA I have met other researchers, encountered questions and problems I had not considered before, and learned several new approaches to my craft that will no doubt find expression in my work for years to come. And I am happy to report my most latest development, which is that my status at MIT has now been upgraded to "Artist in Residence," with the award of a large grant from the Center for Arts, Science & Technology. This grant will see my research continue through the rest of the year. 

I am excited to share more of the results from my first six months at MIT, and will do so very soon. But for now, I have the smallest of projects to share that have spun out of my time mixing it up at CBA.



I started seriously thinking about this idea way back in June of 2025 (while having conversations at Haystack) and touched on this project briefly in my January post. 

In February, I did some preliminary machining experiments to prove the concept could work. And since then I have been refining the project into the final form you see here. A very humble, but charismatic pot!

I am calling this work the Orbital Pro-pot, named after my shorthand for the machining operation I am using to make it.

To go way back to the seed for this idea. This whole idea planted itself in my mind after seeing a short video (probably on Instagram) of someone cutting a pumpkin like form, using a very unique setup, on a unique piece of equipment. An antique rose engine lathe. 

If you don’t know what a rose engine lathe is, I would encourage you to check out the Plumier Foundation (you won't be sorry, they are fascinating machines). I have always been inspired by rose engine work, and Guilloché more broadly. And I have seen CNC machinists adapt some of the techniques from these older crafts into more modern decorative formats. 

But until very recently, I had never seen anything quite like this process being used, and certainly not in this way.

I asked around, and nobody could tell me what this process was called, and after tracking down the origin of that rose engine video, I pieced together that the tools used were likely all custom made (sadly, the poster of the video did not respond to any of my attempts to message them). 

So from there I was left with little information, and only my imagination to go on in developing my own take on this weird little process. Since no one could tell me if this process had a name, I began calling it “orbital profiling” because I believed it best describes what it is. A single point cutting operation where the tool "orbits" around the workpiece to be cut. 

While the uses for this process are fairly limited, it is perfectly suited for applying a variety of decorative surfaces to spherical shapes. That is provided you have a way to generate a part program that can stand in for the rosette plates that an antique rose engine might use. I had to methodically plot and write this piece of G-code by hand because there was no other immediately accessible way to create this program. 

The key take away for me from this whole project was that this is mostly a decorative process. Because of this, I took what I consider to be a decorative approach to the design of the object it would adorn. Pulling from my experiences making small mechanical vessels seemed the correct format for this project and so a small jar or pot was chosen as the composition.

Not content with making a straight forward pot, I decided to add one more "twist" to the project by concocting a way to (sort of) lock the pot lid. Or at least making it somewhat tricky to open.

Seeing as there was plenty of room in the bulk of the body of the pot, I mounted a bearing in between the inner container and outer body so that the two would spin freely from one another. This means that, try as you might, you cannot twist the lid from the pot as the inner vessel will just spin free of the outer casing.

Its not unlike an inverted child proof bottle.

 

In order to open the pot, you need to insert a pin (or three) into the bottom of the pot to lock the two rotating sections together. I have simply 3D printed up a sort of key that is also a stand for this purpose.

I think the whole thing is nicely over engineered. My take on what a rose engine turned "decorative" pot, might be.

Technical notes: I had a lot of fun building the set up for this work. Adapting a boring head and boring bar to the process was pretty straight forward, but it reminded me of my early days hacking together the simplest of tools to learn basic machine tool operations that I could ill afford to purchase the proper equipment for. In this case the proper equipment simply did not exist.

The surface finish this process leaves on the aluminum is incredible. One of the things that attracted me to the project is that even though I am using my milling machine to make these parts, the process feels more like a turning operation, just with the axes all swapped around. Using a single point tool to trace a circular profile around a rotating piece of material provides a similar finish to a turned part, as opposed to one cut using an end mill or other multi flute tool that uses more linear movements.

This twisted machine profile reveals another interesting technical wrinkle for me, which is that I cannot accurately render this pattern in any of my CAD software.

That is I have a rough idea of what the final pattern will be and all of the layout shapes I am using. However, I have yet to figure out a way to bring all of those pieces of information together into a truly faithful 3D prediction of the final part. I am not saying it cannot be done, but it is beyond my abilities.

This is unusual for me because I usually don't commit to a design until I have an accurate render of what the final outcome will be. Here, I had only a "close enough" idea of the outcome. I had to feel my way through a squishier gap between the plan and final outcome than I am generally comfortable. During test cutting, I made many small adjustments to the starting height and entry point for the cutter, accepting along the way that I was not entirely in control of what the outcome might be.

That uncertainty was probably good for me to be honest.

 

I have a number of small but meaningful improvements I would like to implement. Chief among them is a multi start thread so that the lid takes fewer rotations to remove. I have always wanted to make a multi start thread, so it will be fun to see if I can coax my machines to produce a good one. 

All of that is to say that I am keen to make a few more of these. So if you are a collector, see below.

Note for collectors: I am going to break with my usual routine of sending a sign up separately because I have a busy end of the month coming up (as will be revealed). So if you want to add one of these pieces to your collection, my books are officially open for this work as of right now.

Pre-orde Link is Here

All of the details for the project including pricing and timeline are at the link above. Since I am dropping this project with no notice, I will leave the sign up open a week longer than usual.

This portion of the blog will self-destruct on July 30th.

If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, I would love to hear from you. Expect another post very soon.

Sincerely
Chris Bathgate