Recently we have been looking into collaborating more actively with Houston's vibrant art and craft scene and as part of that work we happened to find a really great project that let us show off the unique technical and creative talents that TX/RX's diverse community possesses. As part of their annual fundraiser the Glassell School of Art a part of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston was looking for a 12ft Disco Shark and they looked to us to design and fabricate it. What better use is there for the cad and cnc capabilities we have than to create a giant disco shark? So we got a team together and went at it. The process would normally be done manually by sculpting the form from a larger piece of material but given the skills and tools at our disposal we instead decided to do all our sculpting work digitally drastically speeding up the fabrication time.

After fully designing and sectioning the shark to allow for easy cnc machining we went to work on the labs 4x8 cnc router to rough out the parts.

After A lot of foam flying around the shop we ended up with shark filets... ready to assemble.

Assembly was the easy part, it was the step after that turned into a little bit of a task. We had to cover 12 ft of shark with mirrors... can any one say E-6000? I think we used all the E-6000 in Houston and I am pretty sure the folks at the craft stores here in town think we are running a glue huffing ring. Its ok though we turned our tiling chore into a tiling party, Not sure what the right paring is with shark but we choose margaritas.

We think it came out looking amazing, so much so we were actually sad to see it go when it was purchased by a guest at the party. Would have looked nice hanging above the 3d printing area. We were really excited though to get to show Houston's art community what is possible with the technology we are providing and hope more artists and makers will come out and learn how to use the technology and techniques.