Melting Pot

A dual-purpose flowerpot to showcase small picked flowers both alive and wilting.

Material: Al 6061

Processes: CNC Milling, Finishing

A project for Stanford class ME 318: Computer-Aided Product Realization. On top go living, vibrant flowers snatched while on a walk. As they wither, you can move them down to the melted section to hang upside down. That way, they retain their color as they dry, letting all enjoy. Melting Pot subjects a traditional flower pot to the same fate as the flowers it holds, and creates a negative space between living and dying flowers that is itself an ornament to admire. Its melting drips force you to keep it on a ledge - a windowsill, table, or shelf - to take a more active role in the room it resides in.

The droops of the melting flowerpot were difficult to model, but with enough fillets and a couple dozen cuts from different angles, a semi-organic flow was achieved. To manufacture Melting Pot took 3 part-flips in total, which presented an issue of both work holding and setting a work coordinate system. I decided to use parallel surfaces on the stock to hold the first two setups, setting an origin on an already-machined feature, then holding the piece itself for the final two setups.