We love making chips here at Tormach, and so do our customers - whether they're making production parts or machined art. Some customers even make unnecessary chips - when a part can be made other ways - just because they want to see some metal fly.
Chris Bathgate makes chips for purely aesthetic reasons. He is a self-trained machinist that uses handmade tools, as well as his Tormach machine tools, to create precise components that are assembled into intricate sculptures.
Bathgate was recently profiled over at Engineering.com, where he talked about his sculpture that was designed with over 1,000 individually machined parts.
Images by Chris Bathgate
According to the article, Bathgate says, “I actually use a pretty diverse mix of tools. I used a mix of CNC and manual operations to make the parts for this piece. While the bulk of the work is done on CNC tools, I think almost every part I made had at least one manual operation as well. I use what is best suited for the task.”
Bathgate discusses the building of his 88-pound, machined art sculpture in his blog, as well as his many other ongoing projects.
If you follow his blog, there is a lot of interesting machined art, many pieces that are created purely for the sake of being interesting. And they are quite cool!
We can’t wait to see more from Bathgate, as he continues to merge industrial design and complex art.
