We’ve been developing technology for many years to improve production lines and the lives of workers. The implementation of these innovations offers huge benefits for both the company and its workers by creating a safe work environment with increased productivity in lesser time and at lower costs.
Currently, the wide range of robotic systems used in much of the industrial sector has demonstrated a high level of profitability and flexibility, even in the use of industrial robots that handle various materials such as stone, wood, metal, and plastic for artistic work to create state-of-the-art sculptures.
This is the case of sculptor, cartoonist, and photographer Robert Longo, born on January 7, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, who studied sculpture with Leonida Finka and obtained a scholarship at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence in 1972. He then went on to obtain a BFA from Buffalo State College in 1975.
Longo and his friends established an avant-garde gallery at the Essex Art Center that was originally a converted ice factory. The gallery became the Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. Although he studied sculpture, his favorite art was drawing—drawings that required a “sculpted” perspective with a chiseled line characteristic that gives his work a three-dimensional quality.
This artist achieved recognition in the 80s for his work “Men in the Cities”, a piece of artwork that portrays elegant men, who gave off the feeling of moving in the air; he made music videos and filmed a movie, Johnny Mnemonic, which Keanu Reeves stars in. “In general, Longo’s work seeks to express his concern about the tension that society exerts on people and their lifestyle.”
Now Robert Longo is calling on society through his Death Star 2018 work, addressing the situation that exists in regards to the use of weapons. This work expresses the artist’s concern about violent issues that affect society. Specifically, it represents the increase in deaths due to mass shootings in the United States over the past 25 years.
This impressive sculpture has close to 40,000 bullets (brass, copper, and lead) and the diameter of the sphere is 77 inches.
To create this work, Longo used the same automated robotic drilling technology used in aerospace projects, with the collaboration of Neoset Designs (a digital studio, specialized in creating art with industrial robots, using an advanced computer programming tool that controls the precision of the movements of the robots in charge of the production). Robert Longo carried out his Death Star 2018 design based on Longo’s original Death Star sculpture from 1993, using technological innovations to make a design with twice as many materials, there were 40,000 perforations made within a range of 0.15 mm in approximately 2 weeks, made in the exact location and done quickly and accurately through efficient use of time.
In this process, one of the most powerful industrial robots was used—the KUKA Titan. This industrial robot is equipped with a machining spindle, a WEISS turntable, and the Creaform C-Track as a measuring system to obtain the required degree of precision. Proptogroup designed the internal structure, the Ibeam armor, and the RoboDK software for calibration and offline programming along with a Python script and the robot controller to manage the industrial robot in real time.
To create stability in the molten steel structure during the machining and drilling carried out by the robot, the sphere that weighed one ton had to be divided into 2 parts, the former engineer who worked for NASA in the army, Alejandro, was in charge of helping the Neoset team to make random pattern variations with a custom algorithm created in Matlab to place each bullet in the correct hole in a 3D space, even designing a drilling tool to minimize the vibrations, which worked as a small 3-axis CNC located on the robot flange.
In the end, the machining challenge for this digital technology was overcome thanks to the precision of the robotic system’s movements, creating a sublime artistic project that has a single purpose: to donate 20% of the sales to Every Town for Gun Safety to support them in their efforts to reduce armed violence.
If you’re an aspiring sculptor, the sky is the limit for you just like it was for Robert Longo. Get your own used KUKA robot on sale from a reliable company that specializes in selling used and refurbished robots.
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