Donovan Dynamics
Working Models · Making

Light in Resin

James Donovan2 min

From October 2016 to the summer of 2017 I used a Formlabs Form 2 resin printer as a sketchbook. The archive holds about a dozen folders of my own designs from those months: a diatom, a torus bent into a tube, tiles of Islamic geometry, a waveform dish, a snake vase, and a face cut from my own head scan.

From white to clear

The first prints, photographed in late November 2016, were opaque white test pieces.

White resin test prints laid out on a wooden table, among them a goblet, a split ring, a zigzag strip and an S-shaped tube.
Test pieces, November 2016.
A white resin bowl shaped like a six-pointed star with soft folded sides, on a wooden table.
A folded star bowl from the same batch.

By February 2017 the prints were clear and built around light. A crystal gem lamp, a disc of radial facets, was designed with a holder for a ring of LEDs underneath. I photographed it lit on 4 February.

A round clear resin disc covered in radial crystal facets, lit from below so it glows amber and orange.
The crystal gem lamp, February 2017.

Five days later a faceted hourglass vase glowed blue on an LED base.

A clear resin hourglass vase covered in small faceted gems, standing on a round LED base that lights it bright blue from below.
The LED vase, February 2017.

Voronoi vessels

The vessels started as code. A Processing sketch, adapted from an example in the hemesh library, scatters points on a sphere and draws the cells between them. In February and March 2017 those sketches wrote out 107 Voronoi meshes, and a related set wrote 27 versions of Dini’s surface, a twisted spiral. The renders above are three of the vessels. Two printed in clear resin became planters, photographed on 4 March 2017 with a peace lily and an orchid growing in them.

Two clear resin Voronoi lattice bowls sitting on concrete pots, one holding a peace lily and the other a flowering white orchid, beside a speaker by a window.
Two Voronoi vessels as planters, March 2017.

More prints and renders, 2016–17

The spiked LED vase glowing green in a dark room.The faceted gem lamp glowing orange, from the side.The LED vase from above, a spiral of glowing spikes.A Voronoi sphere lamp throwing cell shadows on a wall.A white resin snake vase curling on a wooden table.An open white resin ring on a wooden table.The gem lamp from above, rings of facets.The LED vase glowing magenta beside a plant.Render of a clear Voronoi vessel.Line render of a shallow Voronoi bowl.A white resin form with folded radial faces.A Voronoi vessel planter with a peace lily by a window.Wireframe render of a spiralling tube.Close-up of the LED vase's glowing spike lattice.A small white resin trumpet vase.The LED vase glowing warm white beside an orchid.

All 6 in Working Models