Intermediate result to the prototype

After the 3D Pony head has savely arrived in Linz at the Ars Electronica Futurelab the preparations for the first trial are running.
Pepe and I plan to visit Linz in round about 2,5 weeks. Pepe needs an health certificate from the medical officer for animals. Appointment is already made. Than we needed quarters for both of us. That was something new, and when I told a colleague about it, he started smiling and asked if I have booked a double room.
The wraparound cameras has to be placed at the head and each ear get an own little camera. Marianne and I agreed that the best way to fix the camera to the ears has to be a fly cap. I don't have any experiences with fly caps and since we are building a prototype and all has to fit exactly I grabbed a crochet hook.

Ears are crochet around

That's how it looks right now, not ready. Pepe takes it with equanimity, or better I try to take it calmly. Normally I need a halter and a cord, sometimes if necessary a brush and now that Crochet ears.

Meanwhile in Linz it looks like this:

Ears are looking at robots

There it is the fascinating 3D Pony head. The ears look at robots, how could it be otherwise at Ars Electronica Futurelab ...

Because Marianne and I step only on new land we thought a lot where to meet. I'm all in all 50 km away from Linz. Pepe need a proper quarter and the usual business hotels in Linz didn't hit the pattern.
Few days ago I wanted again make some experiments with the GoPro. When I tried to apply it to the Pony head I noticed that I had forgotten a really tiny part. It happens all the time when you work with technical odds and ends. Anyway I thought I have to be at the Futurelab with Pepe, otherwise we will have to many problems. And here we go, we have a special parking permission for my car and a horse trailer. And a requirement to take the pony droppings with us. Told you: New land where ever we go. And that's the parking ground:

Parking space in front of the Ars Electronica Futurelab

Pepe's head as a 3D print

Well packed did the head arrived and I had just one morning for a 'photo-shooting'. Now the head is in Linz, Austria at the Ars Electronica Futurelab for the prototype setup.

But in short my feelings when I had unpacked the head and hold it in my hands: deep respect, wonder, joy ... He felt fragile, because the head is very light. Somehow I don't want to give him away ... I think of him as some sort of art!

From the 3D scan to the print job

It's been a while that I wrote here about the 3D scanning of the Ponyheads. Meanwhile happened a lot and before and during Easter time mails were flown between Stefan Nitz, Marianne Ternek and myself to an fro. Stefan had worked a lot with the data, I got a lot of orders for remeasuring Pepe's head and Marianne looked with a very professional eye at the intermediate results.

Request for measurement from Stefan looked like this

Pepe was very patient

Comments from Marianne often looked like this:

It felt like hundreds of emails and I think the tension rised with all of us. Easter Monday was the last day and Stefan presented the final version here. Meanwhile the look of the pictures had changed a lot.

Almost final version

Our teamwork was fascinating. Marianne and Stefan had never met or even phoned. I only have seen both of them once. But we operated well together, as if it was our 10th project. For all of us it was unknown territory and therefor I think this teamwork was kind of unprecedented and I like to think back to this intensive time. We often just discuss questions of proportion like what about the muzzle, what to do with this huge amount of hair or are the nostrils ok? By all these questions I tried to measure or made photos, Marianne surprised us with pictures she found in my own Blog: Friendly Hairy Creature.
Tuesday after Easter the print should start. All in all the whole head needed 52 h printing time. During the week I couldn't help but asked Stefan how is it going, because I started counting hours beginning on Tuesday morning. Of course by a job like this, there are also some preparations on the printer side.
Last question was about the material. The suggestion was a sort of polypropylen that means it would be transparent.
In between Stefan sent us a video with the following words: "Pepe looks good in the printer. Attached a video - but you can't see much. The laserpoint drives over the model and are heating up the material."

Finally a picture from the head. More pictures are in the next post. We took some and I want to share them separately.

1:1 Druck von Pepes Kopf