St. Vincent de Paul, the patron saint of Charities, has been memorialized in a beautiful statue. Though he lived in 17th century France, the statue was created by the most modern of manufacturing techniques, including laser scanning, subtractive machining, and modern foundry work. The sculpture belongs to Sacred Heart Catholic Elementary School, Patterson, Calif.

Final statue in bronze.

The head was scanned in Paris, France and the files were sent to Harry Spell at Art Casting of Illinois and then to Clinkenbeard in Rockford, Ill. Clinkenbeard used a subtractive method with a 3-axis CNC vertical milling center working from a 3D model generated from scan data to cut the head out of urethane and the bust out of foam, working to very fine detail. Art Casting of Illinois, Inc., cast the sculpture in bronze. The sculpture is about 6 ft tall.

Pattern for the head was machined out of urethane, and torso out of foam. Both photos courtesy, Art Castings of Illinois, Inc.

Art Casting is a bronze foundry specializing in fine art sculpture. Technologies used in creating lovely works of traditional art include such modern techniques as laser scanning, photo-polymer jetting, selective laser sintering, stereolithography, fused deposition modeling, and 3D printing.

Clinkenbeard, founded in 1966 as a pattern shop serving the aerospace industry, used the laser scans they received and machined patterns for the St Vincent sculpture. They used a 3-axis vertical milling center to fashion patterns for the head of the statue from urethane materials where the statue would need to reflect lifelike appearance in facial features. For the torso of the statue, foam materials were used. When the patterns were complete, they were sent to Art Casting for the foundry work and final finishing of the statue.

Clinkenbeard
www.clinkenbeard.com

MPF

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