One Giant Elephant Head

In my 3D Design class this past spring,

we had to build a couple of giant metal animal heads.

The class was split up into 3 groups.

My group decided to build a giant elephant head.

Here was our model; a tiny toy elephant.

The dots all over his head are measurements that we made.

When welding, you must wear the proper safety equipment,

so that you don't get burned.

Gloves, a welding helmet, safety glasses,

long sleeves, pants, and shoes that protect your toes. =]

The first thing we had to do was

build an armature out of metal rods.

Sometimes the rods gave you a rusty hand.

Here is one of my group members bending a rod.

Gauges on the welder

I cut the ear off of our model elephant,

so that we see the ear better and make proper measurements of it.

Here is the giant line sculpture of the elephant.

We learned to use a torch to cut the metal rods when necessary.

Guys welding.

If you look at the light while welding, you could go blind.

Once the armature was completed,

we cut the ears and trunk off of the head.

Then we covered everything in cardboard.

The pieces of cardboard

were used as a pattern for the sheet metal.

To cut the pieces out of sheet metal,

we used a plasma cutter.

The plasma cutter shoots out lightning

and cuts through metal.

Using the plasma cutter gives you a really powerful feeling.

We use clamps like this to hold our metal

pieces into place while we welded them together.

This is one of the ears.

This is the elephant trunk covered in cardboard.

Sometimes we had to beat the metal with a hammer

to form the sheet metal

into the shapes we wanted.

The girls in my 3D class are powerful.

Welding

Here is the trunk covered in metal.

One of the ears almost finished

Rusty metal looks awesome

ONE GIANT ELEPHANT HEAD COMPLETED

This was a pretty intense project and

we spent many MANY hours building it.

I am very proud of it and I look forward to

seeing where it will be placed on campus.