Features of Use of Rapid Prototyping Technology in the Manufacture of Wax Models of GTE Turbine Blades

The paper presents the main results related to the peculiarities of using 3D printing technology and methods of rapid prototyping in the manufacture of wax models of blades of a GTE turbine. The main design solutions that must be used in the design of a blade blank are presented in detail: the total shrinkage coefficient, equidistant rolling of the airfoil profile, allowance along tract surfaces, radial fillets, and a number of others. The results of control of geometric dimensions of the turbine blade blanks at the corresponding stages of the technological process showed deviations from the nominal value within the tolerance range for the executable dimensions, and the statistical information from the measurement of an experimental batch of wax models of blade blanks showed stability of the silicone tooling and ability to manufacture a series of wax models of the blades in the amount of 100 pieces when using one mold.

Cadaver Imitations used in Anatomical Demonstrations: Wax Modelling in the 18th Century

The use of wax models has a long history associated with various connotations and practices. For centuries, models were predominantly of votive and devotional nature until the birth of anatomical wax modelling of the 18th century, when wax gained pre-eminently scientific connotations, parallel with all earlier practices. In this period, wax was found very suitable for scientific demonstrations by its plasticity through high level of naturalistic imitation. This is why it was chosen for manufacturing anatomical models, which showed contemporary knowledge about the human body in a comprehensive manner. The first centres of anatomical wax model production were established in Bologna, and then in Florence. Although such models were produced in other European countries, these two studios, especially the Florentine one, preserved its dominance, and exported models outside of Italy too. Yet there were general rules and manufactural techniques in some principles the studios showed different approaches in modelling. The Anatomical Venus, a specific genre of anatomical wax models, offered a valuable insight of reflections about contemporary ideas of female body, gender features and various connotations in a single wax object.

NOTES ON BRONZE POLE-TOPS WITH A GRIFFIN FROM SCYTHIAN ALEKSANDROPOL BARROW

The article proposes a scheme and algorithm for the manufacture of four bronze pole-tops from the Scythian Royal Alexandropol burial mound dated to the second half of the 4th century BC, which can serve as a basis for understanding the manufacturing process or the ancient repair of the similar Scythian replicated products. There is both a general idea of the manufacture of such bronze pole-tops by casting (according to a wax model or in detachable forms), and private judgments about the nature of castings, the correction of defects and the repair of pole-tops and their parts. But at the same time, specific details of the production process by different researchers (S. V. Polin, B. N. Mozolevsky, A. I. Melyukova, L. I. Babenko, A. R. Kantorovich, V. R. Erlikh, etc.) are assumed different, showing a very colorful picture. The process of making bronze pole-tops which were similar in composition, but different in the elaboration and decoration, most likely consisted of the following successive steps: creating a stencil of wax models of griffins in a rectangular frame; revision and decoration by hand of some individual parts on the surface of these wax figures (wings, paws, etc.), giving individuality to each object; attachment and molding of wax plugs; closure of the wax model by the clay mold, its drying and firing (?); casting in metal; destruction of clay mold; machining the surface of the casting. The pole-tops are casted from lead-tin bronze (copper is the base, tin is 9—12 %, lead is 2—3 %, traces of arsenic, iron and nickel). The pole-top (no. Dn 1853 1/6) differs by one feature. On the side edges of the nozzle are high dark triangles with clear boundaries, made by lead-tin plating. On the other objects such ornamentation (?) is not visible. Thus, the considered pole-tops were made using a single stencil and cast according to a single technical scheme.

DRIEDIMENSIONAAL NIEUWS

THREE-DIMENSIONAL NEWS The Amsterdam wax museum as a competitor of the illustrated newspaper, 1882-1919 The nineteenth-century wax museum can be viewed as a contemporary mass medium that showed people scenes from the news. The Nederlandsch Panopticum was the first of its kind in the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam between 1882 and 1919. As an informative visual medium, the Panopticum had to compete with other media, like the illustrated newspaper, for the attention of the public. At the same time, the wax museum also depended on photographs published in these same papers: wax models were often, and in the course of time almost exclusively, modelled after photos. This reciprocal relationship can be seen as an example of ‘intermediality’. In the end, the wax museum lost ground, foremost, to the new mass medium of the time, cinema, which took over both as an urban attraction and as a popular visual medium.

The ceroplastic collection of the Royal Veterinary School in Madrid: a history waiting to be recovered

The principal aim of this article is to raise awareness of a collection whose singular nature endows it with enormous heritage value. It presents a historiographical and artistic analysis of the collection of wax models formed at the Royal Veterinary College in Madrid in the period from 1793 to 1863 and currently preserved in the Complutense Veterinary Museum. The data extracted from primary documentary sources, such as the records from the old school which have been preserved, have been verified using secondary bibliography, complemented by scientific observations on the sculptures in question. The results obtained have enabled us to reconstruct the history of the creation and functioning of the ‘Waxworks Laboratory’, to identify the manufacturers and the technical choices they made, to date each model, and to determine the reasons behind the loss of a significant number of them.

Visceral visions: art, pedagogy and politics in Revolutionary France

In late eighteenth-century France, at the seeming height of neoclassicism in the arts with its goal of idealized form al’antica in the depiction of the human figure, an intensified fascination with the visual experience of viscera emerged. Picturing viscera became increasingly common in visual culture. These developments occurred during a period of intense political and cultural upheaval and concomitant violence and bloodshed in France. Graphic anatomical plates, prints, and caricatures as well as wax models of viscera cast from the body parts of corpses, were used for pedagogical instruction as were écorché figures, either sculpted or cast from cadavers. Paintings were made that engaged the subject of death and disembowelment. We also see the actual participation in dissection by artists as well as anatomists. Artists, anatomists, and amateurs (sometimes working in concert) produced compelling images of what lies beneath the skin for a variety of purposes and functions.