CSC400 The Sundial Project

What is The Sundial Project?

Sundial

A rubbing of the sundial

A drawing of the sundial, by Makana Hirose

"I am a member of the Kahn Institute seminar on Time this year. One of the projects that we've been looking into is the sundial given by the class of 1883, which was out by the peacock bench near Green Street until it was vandalized a few years ago (the stem is still in the ground there). In our research we have determined that the original bronze dial and gnomon have been lost (or stolen) and an off-the shelf replacement installed, which is neither the correct size nor does it have the engraving that was designed by the class of 1883. However, we do have a pretty good photograph of the dial (taken at an angle alas) and a rubbing of the original in the archives. It occurred to me that there might be the chance to replicate the original dial using the 3-D printer, then we could take a mold and recast the dial. That would make the conservation of the rest of the sundial much more authentic, since the bronze dial is the really important part of this piece."

-- David Dempsey, October 14, 2009

Collaborations Poster 12Apr10.

Sundial Project High-Resolution Images

3D Printing Web Site

3D Printing Page (Alex & Angela) Now (14Feb11) moved by Joe into his directory. Some functionality is broken because many links were hard-coded. Let me know if something isn't working and I'll fix it.

Helpful Links

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SolidWorks

Blender

"Final" .stl Files

(23Sep10) For Kaitlin and R.B.: I placed here the folder which I think Kaitlin gave me in May, called sidethird. http://cs.smith.edu/~orourke/Sundial/sidethird/ Inside should be four files, named:

sunfin.stl
upperthird.stl
lowerthird.stl
sidethird.stl

The sunfin.stl file has reversed facets on the sides of the phoenixes, evident in MeshLab. One of the three third.stl files (not sure which) has a base which is about 1-2 mm thicker than the other two. The other two have perfectly identical bases. Also one of the files has two little spurs sticking out, but I think I can just cut those off with a knife. But it would be very difficult to remove 1 mm evenly from the bottom of the thicker base. As R.B. said, it may just be that these are not the correct files, that somewhere you have later or more consistent versions.