the-dish-by-the-sea

BUILT WITH

Hadil Habashneh

Mason Llewellyn

Project duration

5 weeks

Summer 2024

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Materials

Cast Aluminum

Carribian Rosewood

Brass Sheet

Fabrication methods

Sand Casting

CNC

3D Printing

key skills

Kinematic Design

Pattern Making

CAD and CAM

A trophy for a car show shouldn't be static. In the summer of 2024 I was tasked by David Kelly and Jon Feiber to design and manufacture the Stanford CARS Award for the 2024 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance with Hadil Habashneh and Mason Llewellyn. With a nod to Stanford's iconic dish, and the journey of the Tour d'Elegance we created 'The-Dish-by-the-Sea', a trophy designed not to be 'parked' on a shelf, but to be 'driven' by its winner.

Moving between a few sketches and initial ideas, the Sphericon geometry was the one that stuck with us. So we 3D printed two regular Sphericons to ideate and evaluate the design with the physical model in hand. The rolling motion was fantastic to see but we needed to work on two things:

  1. The ergonomics of holding the trophy: Because we were designing for an award, we experimented with how it would be held up and it felt too wide and difficult to hold (especially when it's made from aluminum which is heavier than PLA).
  2. The shape looked visually heavy from certain angles.

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To address those two issues I modeled two versions with narrower profile for better ergonomics and I redesigned the side curves to be more dynamic. in one of them I went with the direction of making the beginning of the side curve flat with the a small radius in the center of the shape. The other one had a smoth but sharp curve that looked more natural.

For casting, I ensured the designed had a minimum draft angle of 5° for a clear release for the mold. both shapes had a maximum thickness of 2.1 inches near the middle to avoid casting defects and sink. And finally the gate and runner were modeled to ensure sufficient metal flow while also being easy to remove in post processing.

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To prepare the pattern boards for casting:
  1. I 3D printed the two halves of each design with 4 wall loop so they handle the molding and ramming up process.
  2. Sanded them to 400 grit sand paper to remove layer lines from 3D printing, make the mold separation easier, and to improve the cast finish.
  3. Hadil took over here, glued the pattern boards and applied wax to the edges to ensure sand doesn't get stuck underneath the pattern boards.

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Ramming up and casting:

Ramming up was challenging because of how high and narrow the shape was. After having sand breakoffs with both patterns we remulled the sand and added more water. to achieve slightly more adhesion between sand particles.

In the second round of ramming up the narrower design failed again but the smoother one pulled cleanly with minimal breakoff.

We're finally ready to pour.

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It's always exciting seeing the results from casting!

We poured 3 sand molds to have a better chance of success, and low and behold the 3rd mold in line (which had the coldest pouring temperature) was the only one with no sink with the first two have minimal sink near the center of the shape.

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Post processing
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Moving through the grits, while testing a design base

As I moved along the sanding grits, we were testing different designs for the base

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The base design

We moved towards the idea of having the trophy, which is inspired by the Dish, sit on the topography of the coastline near pebble beach, specifically Bixby Bridge.

Machining the base

David Kelly guided and supported us throughout the whole process, and handing the trophy over to him to be delivered to Pebble Beach would be a day I remember for ever!

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