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perfectly recreate materials like stone, wood and bark. If you’ve been to an amusement park, a casino or a themed restaurant, you’ve no doubt seen the results of this process – although you may not have been able to tell just by looking.
When more detail is required, the foam version can be coated with a sculpting material like clay. The sculptor gets a perfectly scaled version of the original from which to work on the details. Working with Streamline Automation, a Calgary- based company that’s at the cutting edge of automated foam carving technology, renowned Canadian sculptor Brian Cooley was one of the earliest artists to benefit from this process. Famous for his life-sized dinosaur sculptures featured in museums around the world, Cooley is very familiar with the challenges of creating large sculptures. Prior to bringing technology into the mix, Cooley and his team would spend months pointing up his dinosaur sculptures by hand. It took him only one project to see the impact foam carving could have on these processes.
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As he explains, “with our first project using automated foam carving, we were amazed at how much time was cut from our production schedule. We’re not just talking a week or two, but many months. We had a perfectly scaled enlargement of the original maquette in a fraction of the time, so we were able to spend that much more time on the details, which is where you really make a piece shine.” The results of Cooley’s work speak for themselves.
FOUNDRIES FINDING FOAM CARVING For projects to be finished in mediums like bronze or fiberglass, the foam version can also be used as the basis for the casting or molding process. Instead of an extended manual enlargement process or farming the enlargement out and losing artistic control, many foundries and fabricators are bringing automated foam carving in-house.
Bollinger Atelier in Tempe, Arizona is a full service art foundry that had grown tired of the cost and loss of process control that came with farming out sculptural enlargements and turned to Streamline Automation’s FROG3D® foam carving system. Now, with automated foam carving capabilities, Bollinger Atelier is able to create their own enlargements, which they use as the foundation for a range of casting and molding processes. “We are now able to do all sculptural enlargements in house, which enhances our service and turn-around time frame to our clients, and gives us greater control over costs and quality,” managing partner Tom Bollinger explains. “We can work directly with artists to realize the creation of their sculptures and 3D products without the subcontractor interface.”
Automated foam carving has also given Bollinger the capabilities to go beyond sculptural enlargement in the traditional sphere. “We are now able to work directly with artists and designers from their 3D files to generate milling toolpaths of the digital concepts,” explains
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