A few years back I visited Yoav Reches in a London design space called We Do Studio to discuss product design of Formlabs’ lauded Form 1 3D Printer. During the visit Yoav introduced me to some of his contemporaries working at the same We Do Studio, one such contemporary is Oscar Lhermitte whose Kudu Studio has just launched an out of this world design project onto the crowdfundsphere.
MOON, is a topographically accurate lunar globe available for you to buy and having seen chunks of it during a recent meeting in London I can say it is quite spectacular. It is available on Kickstarter as of today and the work that has gone into producing this groundbreaking piece of design includes some 3D printing.
Kudu has taken the latest data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter combined that with some advanced electronic and mechanical engineering coupled with careful craftsmanship. Oscar used SLS 3D printing at Digits2Widgets in order to create a Nylon master, which he was then able to create a mould from. The globes are rotocasted from hard polyurethane resin and are pigmented in order to get a ‘concrete’ moon-like colour.
The results are the most accurate replica of the moon in existence, at 1/20 million scale the surface features facsimile of the moon’s unique terrain. The design also has a ring of LEDs that revolve around the moon in constantly mimicking the sun’s lighting of the moon’s surface as seen from the earth.
MOON has 3 modes of operation:1. Manual - allowing you to rotate the sun yourself, setting the lunar phase that you would like to see. 2. Demo - letting you observe a synodic month in just 30 seconds. 3. Live - Synchronising itself with the current position of the real moon.
