Links to individual artist's web-sites, service bureaus specializing in art applications, jewelry, industrial design and more.

FAQ's for art & architecture...

Direct link to the arts section of the FAQ's provides examples, and comparative information.

Michaelangelo achieved extraordinary control of his work by chipping marble away a layer at a time to obtain the precise form he had envisioned. His sculpture of David took three years to carve from a nineteen foot block of stone in this way. Many of his later unfinished sculptures which were made using the same technique, give strong impressions of objects formed by stereolithography caught in the moment of rising from a vat of resin, but hardened and frozen in time. While this was certainly not a rapid or an additive process, it is a multi-degree of freedom layered fabrication technique conceptually similar to some forms of modern rapid prototyping technology.

Today, layered fabrication is being used by an increasing number of artists to build a wide variety of sculptural objects. Some of these works are realistic and representational while others are abstract. The abstract objects can be the result of pure imagination and artistic free will, or may be derived solely from mathematics or computation. Some of the works created with rapid prototyping may not have been possible to make any other way.

Jewelry Design

Jewelry and the related arts have been particularly affected. Some systems manufacturers, such as Envisiontec of Germany and Solidscape in the US, have concentrated on this application. There are also service bureaus and university programs which emphasize the design and manufacture of jewelry using rapid prototyping technology. The output of a rapid prototyping system is most often used as a pattern for lost-wax, or other types of casting methods in jewelry manufacture. Direct manufacture of jewelry is also a long-term possibility, however. While precious materials are not yet possible for direct output, a few artists are beginning to explore the use of the existing materials of processes such as selective laser sintering and stereolithography as final media.

Industrial Design and Architectural Modeling

There is some interesting work going on in the industrial design field, but it will require higher resolution and more aesthetically pleasing output before rapid prototyping makes substantial inroads. There is probably more interest in architectural modeling at present where some complex post-modernist building forms, for example, those of the American architect Frank Gehry, are more faithfully and easily represented than they could be using traditional model construction methods.