This work will be displayed (July 27-31) as part of an exhibition during Fab26 , which is an annual Fab Lab Conference & Symposium described as an immersive techno-social conference. More details are at the link.
Aesthetically, my work is a study of the shape space of a multitude of engineering specialties. In using a medium that relies heavily on the practical application of the physical sciences, it is natural to try and distill what aesthetic qualities these domains possess. This might seem whimsical, but my time around engineers and scientists has taught me that many academics see beauty in what they do, but lament that there is insufficient time or opportunity for them to pursue or elevate aesthetic elements of their work. Inversely, my personal experience has been one of stumbling onto aspects of the sciences while chasing aesthetic avenues. I regret too that, by my chosen specialty, am constrained in some ways from digging deeper.
This dichotomy has become the beating heart of my craft, and goes a long way to explain why this research residency at MIT is such a perfect fit and incredible opportunity.
Art and material progress: I think all artists are influenced in some small way by the tools of their craft. In machine work however, the tools of one's craft are the tools of the entire human industrial complex, and by extension all human material progress for the last 10,000 years. So there is a lot to work with. This means any attempt to outline my influences below are going to be a little scattershot. Thankfully, as an artist, I am not bound by rules of coherence. So here goes.
One aspect of this project is a more intentional delve into the shape space of tools, mechanical components, instrumentation, and even martial or regal weaponry. The goal being not in reproducing any of these types of objects, but instead to distill various qualities from them for interesting effect. From their proportions, negative spaces, and other (more benign) characteristics, one can derive an uncanny language from highly engineered objects and demonstrate connections across the many fields and spheres of knowledge that they embody.
As an example, by stripping away utility from engineered things, one can allude to both mechanical properties, and biological systems without necessarily illustrating something that is “Biomechanical”, the latter being a well defined category that carries its own tropes and cultural baggage. The goal being to explore the connective space between these categories without falling into either of them, and in so doing, one can express many parallel thoughts at once.
It is in these (categorical) interstitial spaces that many anthropological threads can emerge. Some that work (or rather do not work) in two directions. Like the duality between the human impulse to display utilitarian objects rather than use them–and the impulse to create fictional functionality for objects that have no apparent use at all.
That is, we ornamentalize and recontextualize utilitarian tools, weapons, and technical memorabilia into something purely decorative, thus defeating their “usefulness”. However, many find it impossible to accept that an art object can be highly engineered, with care and intention, while having no “proper” functional use. I find it fascinating that this transfer from useful to aesthetic does not work equally well both ways. These human habits create the opportunity to trigger uncanny responses to intentionally over engineered, yet vague, sculptural compositions. In this way, vagueness or undefinability becomes a psychological trigger.
Additionally, I find that even in a rigid design environment like in machine design, highly iterative processes often begin to take on biomorphic qualities. That is the simple physical constraints of supporting weight and transferring load, begin to take on biological qualities once a sufficient level of complexity is introduced. This will become its own thread as work goes on, but it speaks to the many convergences we see in fields of design. I love this idea because it challenges the idea of originality when design constraints seem to point disparate practitioners towards a single obvious solution.
More widely, there is the ability to study the life cycle of industrial processes. How different methods of working with materials move from cutting edge technology into industrial mainstay, then into temporary obsolescence where they are later revived and preserved through first hand practice as cottage crafts or adoption into the arts.
Additional background: I have always been fascinated by design motifs when they become decoupled from the functionality they serve. For example, throughout the history of aircraft design, there have been myriad styles and visual elements that have arisen. Styles that have nothing to do with the functionality of aircraft, but are instead representative of an aesthetic design culture that has grown alongside it. Creative design elements in myriad industries, from automotive, to wristwatch design, become decoupled from the objects they are connected to, and serve instead as artifacts of the minds of the people who creatively thrived within those design spheres.
When we talk about various design aesthetics, or periods of time within certain crafts, we usually find ourselves comparing one to another. However it is machine work (my craft) that is the nexus for nearly all contemporary modes of fabrication. Indeed it is the foundation for all material progress in the last century and a half. Within the context of design then, machining is a point of commonality, and source of aesthetic influence, for nearly every design aesthetic one can imagine.
Craft Connections: In art, there is this idea that the pursuit of “the craft” (as a process), can supersede the goals of object making to the point that they become decoupled. That is the craft becomes elevated to a pure art form free of the constraints of utility, enabling a much wider range of expressions. This is extremely common within the Fine Arts and is characterized by the adoption of many defunct and cast off industrial processes (think Fine art glass, ceramics, and metal smithing.
However, the artification of a craft is much more challenging when dealing with material processes that are not yet defunct. When a craft is a living breathing part of active commercial and industrial development, it can be harder to create the conceptual breathing room to hold it out as a fine art medium.
Because of this, my practice as a machinist sculptor has always straddled the line between fine art and active industry. Between commercial production and culture production, sculpture design and product design. There is no process better positioned to undertake an examination of the intersections between the fine arts and the third digital revolution, which is the era of digital fabrication.
Now, on to more brass tacks and details specific to this work.
The concept of the Chain: One feature that was a primary catalyst for this series of works is that of a chain. It is a simple starting point, but one that branches rapidly once you begin to dig into it. I am always on the hunt for traditional craft forms that have been organically transformed by the medium of machine work and the chain has emerged as one of them. I have been excited to find jewelry makers using machine tools to shape elegantly designed links into machined metal jewelry.
On the physics front, I found myself thinking about how extremely long lifting cables (and chains interchangeably) have to be extremely oversized to carry not just the load they are meant to lift, but the mass of their own length. In very long cables a large proportion of the load rating is dedicated simply to accommodating the cables own weight.
However in reality, this load carrying is not evenly distributed throughout the cable. That is, for a very long cable dangling in the air, the top section of the cable has to support the load as well as the entire length of cable below it, while the end of the cable at the bottom only feels the weight of the load. So in this particular thought experiment, an ideal cable might be much thicker at the top than at the bottom. This arrangement would be much more efficient with materials and still support the same load.
There is a parallel here to animal morphology and how plants and animals evolve to create just such efficiencies in their skeletal and body structures. I think this is a great analogy for how we can take the crude, practical application of engineering and bend it toward more elegant designs. 
The idea of designing a tapered cable that is truly efficient with materials was captivating to me, if impractical. At the scale I was working, and with the materials I use, I could never truly approach weight ratios that would put this theory into functional practice. But as a symbolic representation of the concept, there was room to play. So for this first design, a chain that was large at the top, with successively smaller links, could be used to visually communicate some kind of weight distribution. This was the starting point for deriving this portion of my design.
I explored this idea for a bit (even inverting the idea), but decided the constraints for making scalable links were too limiting. I felt that the individual link element should be charismatic enough to stand alone, as well as make sense within the assembly. So that became the priority.
I didn’t abandon the proportions of the tapered chain though. They simply manifested in a different way. The outline created by the ends of the protrusions along the length of the chain are meant to allude to this part of the sculpture's development.
However, the idea of a truly tapered chain remains safely in my back pocket. Who knows, one day it may emerge in some other context.
I worked for quite some time to come up with a charismatic chain link, eventually landing on a rather bulbous design.
I can’t recall ever seeing a chain link intentionally designed to be fabricated on a lathe, but the primary profile of this part was intentionally designed with turning in mind, as I had plans to make it on a rather elaborate piece of turning equipment being brought online in the shop at CBA.
Once I had a chain link and a chain, I had to figure out what to use it for. With the idea of weight distribution in mind, a hanging mass seemed an obvious choice.
Technical Notes: Instead of my usual technical notes, I am going to highlight some details and goals of my artist residency at MIT. I kept a sort of journal of my monthly trips from Baltimore to Cambridge. If that is of interest to you, then read on.
From there I iterated through countless ideas, far too many to write about. It was a grind, but I ended up with several sculpture designs, picked a few winners, and developed them further. From there, far more interesting concepts and connections emerged. The rest of my sketches exist as spare parts to be used in future projects. I am always surprised how old sketches often resurface to solve problems for which they were not intended. Only time will tell how my notes and sketches will eventually unravel.
January visit: My first visit kicked off with a great Omen. A blizzard that blanketed the entire east coast in a foot and a half of snow. After a delay of several days so we could all dig out. I set off for a beautiful, and very white, drive up north. I arrived and got acquainted with one of the machines I would be spending the next year of my life with. The Hurco VMX42SRTi. I will admit, the machine was intimidating. Not because it is huge (because it is), but because it is expensive and, most importantly, does not belong to me. I don’t mind crashing my own equipment, but it feels rude to make expensive mistakes in someone else's house. I already had an inkling as to why I prefer my own studio, and my own equipment.
Most of this trip was spent simply getting acquainted with the space and the dull drudgery of building a workflow that would guide the rest of the year. You can’t use a machine if you don’t know the basic interface. And you can’t run a part if you can’t program the machine. So those were the first steps. Getting the software I was going to use running and registered, turned out to be silly and difficult.
Tools of this nature require complex software to write machine commands. Since the tool motion on a 5 axis machine involves constantly shifting planes, it is beyond intuitive comprehension (for me anyway). To avoid crashing the machine, requires very accurate simulation to ensure that machine, tool, and fixture all clear each other, and that the motion you think you have is what is actually going to happen. This means using software like MasterCam, or Fusion360, or one of the myriad other Cam softwares.
I am writing an essay on the shortcomings of this part of the process. In it, I am trying to keep the tone light, but my complaints and criticisms as they relate to tinker-ability and art making are very real. I will post it whenever it is complete.
Despite all of my struggles (and time talking to tech support) getting software to work, I was able to spend a day actually machining some basic fixturing. I made an adapter plate to mount an 8” chuck onto the pallet system the Hurco uses. So while I did not make many chips on my first trip, I would be ready for my next visit.
February Visit: Similar to January, my February visit saw me battling an ice storm on the way to Cambridge. In the span of an hour I saw no fewer than six accidents as a sheet of ice crept over the roadway as I closed in on my destination. The van was accumulating ice so thick that I had to stop and chip the windshield wipers free to keep them operational. It was a deeply weird commute.
Once I made it to the lab, I was able to settle in with a thermos of warm tea and get down to business. Weather wise, the very next day proved to be warm and lovely.
This visit was all about getting (my now functional) software to play nice with hardware (The Hurco VMX42SRTi) . While 3 axis tool-paths are easy enough to produce in any work flow, getting 5 axis tool paths to play nicely on my specific hardware proved another story. I was still getting the hang of how MasterCam works, so it was more of a battle than I expected (and remains so still).
Ensuring safe travel, plane changes, and tool changes required early vigilance to avoid crashing the machine. A large and necessary amount of time was spent verifying that what the CAM software was outputting was both safe and error free. Once I was certain the tool-path I had created was good, my first test runs were spent with the rapid feed turned down to just 5%, my face pressed tightly against the glass of the enclosure watching for problems, and my hand hovering tensely above the E-stop button.
This was more challenging than it seemed, as much of the tooling required a long stick-out to gain both a respectable depth of cut, and to clear fixtures from every conceivable angle. These long stick-outs greatly affected the rigidity of the tool and by extension, the surface finish of the cut. It was immediately clear that fighting chatter was going to have a large influence on cutting strategies. Fine tuning each cut was enormously time consuming and not altogether successful.
I took notes on what worked, and ordered new tooling to formulate strategies for what did not.
There were also continuing issues in using the CAM software. But slowly, whack a mole style, I overcame each problem as they came up. Great progress was made on machining a number of test shapes, and I was able to make my first true 5 axis swarfing cuts.
For fun, here is the list of all of the many problems and obstacles I overcame in March.
-Crashed tool probe and broke it
-repair and reset tool probe
-conducted 12 speed and feed tests
-machine B axis began squealing as if brake was locked (trouble shooting, no resolution but seems fine now)
-25 mm insert mill did not have sufficient relief on shank. Clearance turned it using a turning tool held in vice while tool was in the mill spindle.
-Mill head failed to orient properly for drilling ops. Spent 45 minutes on phone with Hurco to trouble shoot with no resolution.
-After many tests, discovered the issue was related to Mastercam failing to output vector coordinates for peck drill operations. Solution was to manually insert code for each instance of a drill operation.
-Pocketing operations were producing large faceted finished walls. Line segments instead of arcs.
-Adjust part program to include arc fitting.
-Swarf milling tool paths Hell. CAM software does not like using chamfer mills for swarf cuts.
-Fusion 360 update no longer produces usable code for chamfer mill output.
-Mastercam outputs tool-path for chamfer mill but is extremely buggy.
-After a dozen tests, a usable Swarf tool-path was created.
-Milling soft jaws to grip workpiece as hard jaws were not sized properly.
-Crashed and broke a milling cutter while tired at the end of a 12 hour day. End mill replaced and re-probed.
After all of this, part milling proceeded according to plan and I spent much of the last few days simply hanging out while the milling machine made parts.
April Visit: My April visit was immensely productive. While still very different from working in my own shop back home, after four trips, my workflow was settling into something I sort of recognize. While I can't multitask on multiple machines like I am accustomed to in my own shop (rules are rules) I have developed a rhythm for running parts while refining and programming tool-paths for the next step. Let's call it productive babysitting, because while I still have to keep a close eye on the machine with which I have been entrusted, I feel like my time is being better utilized tending to the ever shortening list of things I need to learn on the fly.
One thing I will say is that I am finding it hard to photo document the process in an interesting way. The large machine housing and full flood coolant mean the view doesn’t change much from day to day. I am mostly watching parts being machined with my face up against the glass of the housing, straining to see what I can through a spray of coolant.
I only occasionally dare to crack the door to stick my camera into the space to capture some images. That said, I am doing my best. I probably should invest in a waterproof GoPro or equivalent camera.
On the software front (I am looking at you MasterCam) I am having much more success wielding the unwieldy. Programs are being made much more quickly with fewer stumbling blocks.
In the process, I am finding amusement in some of the very inefficient, but still safe linking moves I am getting from my output. Each time something like this happens is a chance for me to experiment to figure out how to mitigate it. In turn, I learn a little more about how the software works (or doesn't work).
Regardless, I am bringing a mountain of parts back home with me for post processing, polish, and anodizing.
It just makes better sense to make certain parts in my shop, as I am able to create many more setups at one time to efficiently run hardware type parts and parts that require multiple steps.
I just can’t help myself when it comes to including some sort of extreme interrupted cutting operation on one of my lathes. Here I am cutting the profile on all of the fins in a single go using the Hanging mass body as the arbor to locate them.
By my standards, this was a relatively straight forward operation.
And the results were lovely.
June: Going into June I had almost everything I needed to complete my sculpture. Everything save for one part I was planning to make on CBA’s newest machine; a DMG Mori NLX 2500 Universal Machining Center.
This is definitely one of the nicest tools I have had the pleasure of taking for a spin, but seeing as this tool was new to the entire CBA team from both an operational and programing standpoint, we called in a little help from DMG Mori, and they provided us with a trainer to walk us through both using the machine, and programming this particular part.
This is David Cooper (left), He is a master machinist and DMG trainer. He made himself available for the entire week, and walked me through the entire process of making this particular part on this particular machine.
While I have become much more proficient with MasterCam and Fusion over the last few months, Dave is an expert at using Esprit, which is his preferred flavor of CAM software. And though I have very mixed feelings about adding yet another CAM software package to my plate, with David's help, Esprit proved very functional and it was not long before we were able to prove each operation needed to Turn ,and then mill, and then turn again, and then mill again, this part. All in one setup.
Although I make it a habit to thank Dr. Neil Gershenfeld every time I see him (somewhat to his annoyance perhaps), I would like to thank him again here. Neil has been my sponsor, chief instigator, and unceasing advocate for my work during my time at CBA. On a near daily basis, he will swing through the shop with various titans of science and technology, bring them to my work station, and then proceed to evangelize about how unique it is to have an artist pursuing machine work as an art form. I couldn’t ask for a better advocate and I am grateful to have someone in his position understand what I am trying to achieve. So thank you Neil…one. more. time.
Dan has also been a wonderful collaborator. He is deeply knowledgeable about machine processes and his general optimism helps keep me feeling ambitious about what can be achieved in the short windows of time I have at CBA. It is easy to get derailed in an unfamiliar shop looking for a tool, or a gauge, or anything else I might need. Dan, with a supernatural amount of patience, seems ever ready to drop what he is doing to help keep me (and anyone else) on track. I do not possess that particular skill, and it is a marvel to watch. Thank you Dan. Truly
Back home with the last of the parts: The last two operations for the June’s parts were performed back in Baltimore at the Bathhaus studio. I made a split collar to hold my parts for a clean up and tapping operation.
Then flipped them over onto a simple threaded arbor to put a radius on the backside. Nothing fancy, but it was done without incident and produced a finish to match that of the much more expensive and capable Mori NLX.
With that all done, all that remained was to assemble the parts into a greater whole while not damaging anything.
My second response is that one never knows what aspects of a workflow or process might be scalable for artist appropriation. It is important for me to have domain knowledge, even in processes that seem beyond my financial reach, so that I can see far enough around the corner to adapt to what's coming.
It may seem convenient to say that, because using these tools is admittedly a lot of fun (and no one should discount fun for its own sake). but there is no doubt some part of this experience will find its way back into my practice.
This dichotomy has become the beating heart of my craft, and goes a long way to explain why this research residency at MIT is such a perfect fit and incredible opportunity.
One aspect of this project is a more intentional delve into the shape space of tools, mechanical components, instrumentation, and even martial or regal weaponry. The goal being not in reproducing any of these types of objects, but instead to distill various qualities from them for interesting effect. From their proportions, negative spaces, and other (more benign) characteristics, one can derive an uncanny language from highly engineered objects and demonstrate connections across the many fields and spheres of knowledge that they embody.
As an example, by stripping away utility from engineered things, one can allude to both mechanical properties, and biological systems without necessarily illustrating something that is “Biomechanical”, the latter being a well defined category that carries its own tropes and cultural baggage. The goal being to explore the connective space between these categories without falling into either of them, and in so doing, one can express many parallel thoughts at once.
That is, we ornamentalize and recontextualize utilitarian tools, weapons, and technical memorabilia into something purely decorative, thus defeating their “usefulness”. However, many find it impossible to accept that an art object can be highly engineered, with care and intention, while having no “proper” functional use. I find it fascinating that this transfer from useful to aesthetic does not work equally well both ways. These human habits create the opportunity to trigger uncanny responses to intentionally over engineered, yet vague, sculptural compositions. In this way, vagueness or undefinability becomes a psychological trigger.
Additionally, I find that even in a rigid design environment like in machine design, highly iterative processes often begin to take on biomorphic qualities. That is the simple physical constraints of supporting weight and transferring load, begin to take on biological qualities once a sufficient level of complexity is introduced. This will become its own thread as work goes on, but it speaks to the many convergences we see in fields of design. I love this idea because it challenges the idea of originality when design constraints seem to point disparate practitioners towards a single obvious solution.
More widely, there is the ability to study the life cycle of industrial processes. How different methods of working with materials move from cutting edge technology into industrial mainstay, then into temporary obsolescence where they are later revived and preserved through first hand practice as cottage crafts or adoption into the arts.
Additional background: I have always been fascinated by design motifs when they become decoupled from the functionality they serve. For example, throughout the history of aircraft design, there have been myriad styles and visual elements that have arisen. Styles that have nothing to do with the functionality of aircraft, but are instead representative of an aesthetic design culture that has grown alongside it. Creative design elements in myriad industries, from automotive, to wristwatch design, become decoupled from the objects they are connected to, and serve instead as artifacts of the minds of the people who creatively thrived within those design spheres.
When we talk about various design aesthetics, or periods of time within certain crafts, we usually find ourselves comparing one to another. However it is machine work (my craft) that is the nexus for nearly all contemporary modes of fabrication. Indeed it is the foundation for all material progress in the last century and a half. Within the context of design then, machining is a point of commonality, and source of aesthetic influence, for nearly every design aesthetic one can imagine.
Craft Connections: In art, there is this idea that the pursuit of “the craft” (as a process), can supersede the goals of object making to the point that they become decoupled. That is the craft becomes elevated to a pure art form free of the constraints of utility, enabling a much wider range of expressions. This is extremely common within the Fine Arts and is characterized by the adoption of many defunct and cast off industrial processes (think Fine art glass, ceramics, and metal smithing.
However, the artification of a craft is much more challenging when dealing with material processes that are not yet defunct. When a craft is a living breathing part of active commercial and industrial development, it can be harder to create the conceptual breathing room to hold it out as a fine art medium.
Because of this, my practice as a machinist sculptor has always straddled the line between fine art and active industry. Between commercial production and culture production, sculpture design and product design. There is no process better positioned to undertake an examination of the intersections between the fine arts and the third digital revolution, which is the era of digital fabrication.
Now, on to more brass tacks and details specific to this work.
The concept of the Chain: One feature that was a primary catalyst for this series of works is that of a chain. It is a simple starting point, but one that branches rapidly once you begin to dig into it. I am always on the hunt for traditional craft forms that have been organically transformed by the medium of machine work and the chain has emerged as one of them. I have been excited to find jewelry makers using machine tools to shape elegantly designed links into machined metal jewelry.
One can see how the chain as a compositional framework is elevated by the use of precision tools, yet on some level, the form is held back by the necessity of making bracelets and necklaces at a certain scale. It seemed more could be done with the format to move the idea into something more sculptural.
However in reality, this load carrying is not evenly distributed throughout the cable. That is, for a very long cable dangling in the air, the top section of the cable has to support the load as well as the entire length of cable below it, while the end of the cable at the bottom only feels the weight of the load. So in this particular thought experiment, an ideal cable might be much thicker at the top than at the bottom. This arrangement would be much more efficient with materials and still support the same load.
There is a parallel here to animal morphology and how plants and animals evolve to create just such efficiencies in their skeletal and body structures. I think this is a great analogy for how we can take the crude, practical application of engineering and bend it toward more elegant designs.
I explored this idea for a bit (even inverting the idea), but decided the constraints for making scalable links were too limiting. I felt that the individual link element should be charismatic enough to stand alone, as well as make sense within the assembly. So that became the priority.
I didn’t abandon the proportions of the tapered chain though. They simply manifested in a different way. The outline created by the ends of the protrusions along the length of the chain are meant to allude to this part of the sculpture's development.
However, the idea of a truly tapered chain remains safely in my back pocket. Who knows, one day it may emerge in some other context.
I worked for quite some time to come up with a charismatic chain link, eventually landing on a rather bulbous design.
I can’t recall ever seeing a chain link intentionally designed to be fabricated on a lathe, but the primary profile of this part was intentionally designed with turning in mind, as I had plans to make it on a rather elaborate piece of turning equipment being brought online in the shop at CBA.
Once I had a chain link and a chain, I had to figure out what to use it for. With the idea of weight distribution in mind, a hanging mass seemed an obvious choice.
Pre-project preparations: During the months of October- December 2025, in preparation for my first trip to CBA, I embarked on a 3 month design session to identify an ambitious work that would be ideal for fabrication at CBA. The starting point being to identify geometry that would make best use of the capabilities at CBA. Specifically processes that I do not myself possess in my own studio. This proved harder than I realized which can be summed up for two reasons. The first, over the years I have come up with workarounds for many of the tougher problems I encounter in machining. So even without a 5 axis machine, I have many ways of getting where I want to go. This is related to the second reason, which is that “where I want to go” has everything to do with the visual language I have built over the last two and a half decades. That language lends itself to forms that are solvable, even without a 5 axis machine tool.
To work around this I started with a problem that I knew I could not machine. Simply, to machine a helix that is transcribed around a sphere, rather than a cylinder. It is something that, given an ideal setup, I could easily program by hand. It simply required solving for an angular pitch instead of linear one, and we would be off. However this surfaced many other interesting problems that highlight the give-and-take of any creative process.
For starters, it is a rare case of something that I know how to program, but cannot accurately render in 3D (this idea also cropped up with my Orbital Pro-pot sculpture). I am certain it can be done, I just don’t know how to do it. I asked around to some of the smarter people I know, and nobody else seems to have a straight forward method for “accurately” producing this geometry in CAD and was met with a variety of awkward solutions. A colleague and I managed to use Grasshopper to produce something close, if crude. Another just plunked the problem into an AI model and it spit out a solution that was technically correct, but opaque to me.
Neither of the solutions I was shown exist in a way that I found "tinker-able" which is a quality important for art making that I intend to write more about in the future. Regardless, once I really got a chance to wrap my head around the form, it just didn’t move me in any way that I felt was worth pursuing. That's OK, you have to get the bad ideas out of the way to get to the good ones. That's how it works. Try something, then try another thing.
Most of this trip was spent simply getting acquainted with the space and the dull drudgery of building a workflow that would guide the rest of the year. You can’t use a machine if you don’t know the basic interface. And you can’t run a part if you can’t program the machine. So those were the first steps. Getting the software I was going to use running and registered, turned out to be silly and difficult.
Tools of this nature require complex software to write machine commands. Since the tool motion on a 5 axis machine involves constantly shifting planes, it is beyond intuitive comprehension (for me anyway). To avoid crashing the machine, requires very accurate simulation to ensure that machine, tool, and fixture all clear each other, and that the motion you think you have is what is actually going to happen. This means using software like MasterCam, or Fusion360, or one of the myriad other Cam softwares.
I am writing an essay on the shortcomings of this part of the process. In it, I am trying to keep the tone light, but my complaints and criticisms as they relate to tinker-ability and art making are very real. I will post it whenever it is complete.
Despite all of my struggles (and time talking to tech support) getting software to work, I was able to spend a day actually machining some basic fixturing. I made an adapter plate to mount an 8” chuck onto the pallet system the Hurco uses. So while I did not make many chips on my first trip, I would be ready for my next visit.
February Visit: Similar to January, my February visit saw me battling an ice storm on the way to Cambridge. In the span of an hour I saw no fewer than six accidents as a sheet of ice crept over the roadway as I closed in on my destination. The van was accumulating ice so thick that I had to stop and chip the windshield wipers free to keep them operational. It was a deeply weird commute.
Once I made it to the lab, I was able to settle in with a thermos of warm tea and get down to business. Weather wise, the very next day proved to be warm and lovely.
This visit was all about getting (my now functional) software to play nice with hardware (The Hurco VMX42SRTi) . While 3 axis tool-paths are easy enough to produce in any work flow, getting 5 axis tool paths to play nicely on my specific hardware proved another story. I was still getting the hang of how MasterCam works, so it was more of a battle than I expected (and remains so still).
Ensuring safe travel, plane changes, and tool changes required early vigilance to avoid crashing the machine. A large and necessary amount of time was spent verifying that what the CAM software was outputting was both safe and error free. Once I was certain the tool-path I had created was good, my first test runs were spent with the rapid feed turned down to just 5%, my face pressed tightly against the glass of the enclosure watching for problems, and my hand hovering tensely above the E-stop button.
This was more challenging than it seemed, as much of the tooling required a long stick-out to gain both a respectable depth of cut, and to clear fixtures from every conceivable angle. These long stick-outs greatly affected the rigidity of the tool and by extension, the surface finish of the cut. It was immediately clear that fighting chatter was going to have a large influence on cutting strategies. Fine tuning each cut was enormously time consuming and not altogether successful.
I took notes on what worked, and ordered new tooling to formulate strategies for what did not.
There were also continuing issues in using the CAM software. But slowly, whack a mole style, I overcame each problem as they came up. Great progress was made on machining a number of test shapes, and I was able to make my first true 5 axis swarfing cuts.
During this visit I was struck by just how long it takes to program parts using Mastercam, that is, it took many times longer to create a tool-path, than the actual machining. This of course would be mitigated in a production run, but I am doing prototype work, and the contrast was interesting to me.
Fusion360 worked faster for simple operations, but I could not get it to work for the operations I needed. Namely, a swarfing cut using a chamfer mill. It performed beautifully with a classic end mill set up, but it just did not like the mill geometry I required.
Fusion360 worked faster for simple operations, but I could not get it to work for the operations I needed. Namely, a swarfing cut using a chamfer mill. It performed beautifully with a classic end mill set up, but it just did not like the mill geometry I required.
For fun, here is the list of all of the many problems and obstacles I overcame in March.
-Crashed tool probe and broke it
-repair and reset tool probe
-conducted 12 speed and feed tests
-machine B axis began squealing as if brake was locked (trouble shooting, no resolution but seems fine now)
-25 mm insert mill did not have sufficient relief on shank. Clearance turned it using a turning tool held in vice while tool was in the mill spindle.
-Mill head failed to orient properly for drilling ops. Spent 45 minutes on phone with Hurco to trouble shoot with no resolution.
-After many tests, discovered the issue was related to Mastercam failing to output vector coordinates for peck drill operations. Solution was to manually insert code for each instance of a drill operation.
-Pocketing operations were producing large faceted finished walls. Line segments instead of arcs.
-Adjust part program to include arc fitting.
-Swarf milling tool paths Hell. CAM software does not like using chamfer mills for swarf cuts.
-Fusion 360 update no longer produces usable code for chamfer mill output.
-Mastercam outputs tool-path for chamfer mill but is extremely buggy.
-After a dozen tests, a usable Swarf tool-path was created.
-Milling soft jaws to grip workpiece as hard jaws were not sized properly.
-Crashed and broke a milling cutter while tired at the end of a 12 hour day. End mill replaced and re-probed.
In my own shop, I am accustomed to running multiple machines at once, shuttling between them to keep a steady flow of work moving. But here, I had to settle for tinkering on my laptop and handling office work while the machine was running. To be honest, I was grateful, as this trip was very intensive and I welcomed a slower pace by the end of the trip. Nothing wrong with admitting you are human.
One thing I will say is that I am finding it hard to photo document the process in an interesting way. The large machine housing and full flood coolant mean the view doesn’t change much from day to day. I am mostly watching parts being machined with my face up against the glass of the housing, straining to see what I can through a spray of coolant.
I only occasionally dare to crack the door to stick my camera into the space to capture some images. That said, I am doing my best. I probably should invest in a waterproof GoPro or equivalent camera.
On the software front (I am looking at you MasterCam) I am having much more success wielding the unwieldy. Programs are being made much more quickly with fewer stumbling blocks.
In the process, I am finding amusement in some of the very inefficient, but still safe linking moves I am getting from my output. Each time something like this happens is a chance for me to experiment to figure out how to mitigate it. In turn, I learn a little more about how the software works (or doesn't work).
Regardless, I am bringing a mountain of parts back home with me for post processing, polish, and anodizing.
It just makes better sense to make certain parts in my shop, as I am able to create many more setups at one time to efficiently run hardware type parts and parts that require multiple steps.
I just can’t help myself when it comes to including some sort of extreme interrupted cutting operation on one of my lathes. Here I am cutting the profile on all of the fins in a single go using the Hanging mass body as the arbor to locate them.
By my standards, this was a relatively straight forward operation.
And the results were lovely.
June: Going into June I had almost everything I needed to complete my sculpture. Everything save for one part I was planning to make on CBA’s newest machine; a DMG Mori NLX 2500 Universal Machining Center.
So I set out on my monthly drive with a bag full of tooling eager to learn a bit about using a proper mil-turn machine.
This is definitely one of the nicest tools I have had the pleasure of taking for a spin, but seeing as this tool was new to the entire CBA team from both an operational and programing standpoint, we called in a little help from DMG Mori, and they provided us with a trainer to walk us through both using the machine, and programming this particular part.
This is David Cooper (left), He is a master machinist and DMG trainer. He made himself available for the entire week, and walked me through the entire process of making this particular part on this particular machine.
I learned a lot from David and he was a pleasure to pal around with while doing the hard work of troubleshooting a new process. Dave doesn't like the spotlight, so I apologize for using your image man, but it can't be helped.
While I have become much more proficient with MasterCam and Fusion over the last few months, Dave is an expert at using Esprit, which is his preferred flavor of CAM software. And though I have very mixed feelings about adding yet another CAM software package to my plate, with David's help, Esprit proved very functional and it was not long before we were able to prove each operation needed to Turn ,and then mill, and then turn again, and then mill again, this part. All in one setup.
That is the beauty of a mill turn machine.
Nonetheless, I will still be bringing these back to Baltimore for one more turning operation and some major de-burring. There just wasn’t time to do everything in one short week. 
Lastly, since this first and somewhat overwhelming phase of this residency is nearing its conclusion, and since Fab26 is just a week away, I want to take a moment to thank a few more people responsible for my success in this collaborative endeavor.
Although I make it a habit to thank Dr. Neil Gershenfeld every time I see him (somewhat to his annoyance perhaps), I would like to thank him again here. Neil has been my sponsor, chief instigator, and unceasing advocate for my work during my time at CBA. On a near daily basis, he will swing through the shop with various titans of science and technology, bring them to my work station, and then proceed to evangelize about how unique it is to have an artist pursuing machine work as an art form. I couldn’t ask for a better advocate and I am grateful to have someone in his position understand what I am trying to achieve. So thank you Neil…one. more. time.
Dan has also been a wonderful collaborator. He is deeply knowledgeable about machine processes and his general optimism helps keep me feeling ambitious about what can be achieved in the short windows of time I have at CBA. It is easy to get derailed in an unfamiliar shop looking for a tool, or a gauge, or anything else I might need. Dan, with a supernatural amount of patience, seems ever ready to drop what he is doing to help keep me (and anyone else) on track. I do not possess that particular skill, and it is a marvel to watch. Thank you Dan. Truly
Back home with the last of the parts: The last two operations for the June’s parts were performed back in Baltimore at the Bathhaus studio. I made a split collar to hold my parts for a clean up and tapping operation.
Then flipped them over onto a simple threaded arbor to put a radius on the backside. Nothing fancy, but it was done without incident and produced a finish to match that of the much more expensive and capable Mori NLX.
With that all done, all that remained was to assemble the parts into a greater whole while not damaging anything.
Six months of work and many hundreds of hours later. I have brought something into this world that exists for no other reason other than the fact that I wanted to see it so. I usually need a while for reflection after I finish a work to really get a sense of what I have or have not achieved, but there just isn't time for that yet, as there is a show to hang for Fab26.
Some closing note about the MIT Project: Let's talk about 5 axis machine tools and why I am at MIT.
5 axis and multi-axis equipment, as it relates to studio practice, generally falls into two categories. Small tabletop or experimental machines that are not terribly useful for making anything, and massive industrial tools that are prohibitively expensive and require institutional infrastructure to maintain. Because of this, even though I have been using machine tools in my work for 25 years, I have personally never had an opportunity (until now) to properly utilize a 5 axis or multi axis machine of any complexity.
In fact, I have spent decades coming up with workarounds for projects that might have benefitted from multi axis capability. Mostly by breaking project geometry up into smaller, multi-setup, and multi part configurations. This improvisational work ethic has generally worked well for me, even emerging as a major creative catalyst for much of my design process. It helped shape my ideas about how studio machining, as a fine art craft, might be defined. An important part of that definition has been the concept of one artist, one studio; which is simply the idea that in order to truly explore something, it has to become a process that one can truly own and incorporate into a space set up for experimentation. In the past that has meant a solo artist studio shielded from criticism or the judgement of failure, but it also means an environment free of commercial constraints–That is, the NEED to make money. This is very difficult when your tools require hundreds of thousands of dollars to own and maintain.
When starting this collaboration at MIT I was asked by a new friend of mine, if one of the primary drivers of my work is to explore the tools and processes that a solo artist can reasonably bring to bear, why bother learning such advanced tools that I could never hope or expect to bring back into my studio when the collaboration ends?
This is a good question, and I would answer it two ways. For one, while it is true that I could never afford the tools I am using during my time at CBA, nor the infrastructure to run and maintain them, it is also true that (during this window of time anyway) I am being given access to these tools without commercial or critical constraints (mostly). That is, I am being given the keys to do whatever I want so long as I learn and document my process in a way that can be shared. This seems like a fair deal and meets most of the criteria I highlighted above..
My second response is that one never knows what aspects of a workflow or process might be scalable for artist appropriation. It is important for me to have domain knowledge, even in processes that seem beyond my financial reach, so that I can see far enough around the corner to adapt to what's coming.
It may seem convenient to say that, because using these tools is admittedly a lot of fun (and no one should discount fun for its own sake). but there is no doubt some part of this experience will find its way back into my practice.
There are many small, and increasingly capable, tools entering the market, and also a growing secondary market of older industrial tools, both make the acquisition of some kind of expanded capability more realistic, if still remote. So in a way, this is laying the groundwork for future studio innovations.
At the very least, the ideas for sculptural compositions this residency is inspiring will find future expression in my craft. My notebook is overflowing with notes and sketches. And I am just getting started.
