UV Cure

For the final assignment, I present my nail study. Nail Study is my research for the work titled “Ornamentalism”. In this work, I focus on the nail industry in the U.S, specifically the Vietnamese nail technicians. Today, the U.S nail industry is estimated around 8 billion dollar revenue yearly and more than half of the nail technicians in the U.S are Vietnamese. It was started by 20 Vietnamese refugee women. After the Vietnam War in 1975, millions of Vietnamese refugees immigrated into the U.S and many stayed at the Hope village in Northern California. Tippi Hedren, an American actress, was doing humanitarian work at the village and saw these Vietnamese women admired her nails. She brought her personal manicurist, Dusty Coots, to come to the refugee camp and teach these 20 women how to do a manicure as it would be done in Beverly Hills. And they’re really the first manicuring licenses out there in the world, because before that time, women always got licensed for both hair and nails.

There are a total of 7 studies which show 7 different sets of nails. They are different in length, shape and material.

~ Study No. 1 is printed with a 3D printer using the PLA 3D printing filament. The printing model is not successful because the nail is too thin for the PLA filament to build up and the filament just becomes a tangible mess.

~ Study No. 2 is printed by 3D printer using SLA resin. The printing model is not successful again because the nail is too thin so it breaks into two pieces.

~ Learning from the failure of the Study No. 2, Study No. 3 was then triple thickening its thickness and is continued to print using the SLA resin. The printing model comes out successful.

~ Study No. 4 shows my exploration with creating the nail as long as possible. In order to print the nail as long as 18 inches, it has to be printed in two parts and then glue these two parts back in. With this study, while I am satisfied with the length, I am unsure about the joining method because the nail is easily to break at the joint area.

~ With Study No. 5 and Study No. 6, I decided to completely change the shape of the nail. It is no longer in the straight and flat form; instead the nail is in the curvy shape. Study No. 5 model is curvier than the Study No. 6 model as you can see in the picture. With the Study No. 5, the curve starts around the middle of the nail, while with the Study No. 6 starts toward the tip of the nail. I also changed the material of both of these studies from the normal SLA resin to the special resin, Porcelain.

~ Study number 7 is in a completely different material. It is in the aluminum material with the straight shape. With this material, aluminum, I can control the surface of the nail. For example: I can control the level of shininess (shinier or less shiny) as well as smoother or less smooth. This controllable allows me to create different types of textures for the nail.

The rest of the pictures show the process of printing with the Porcelain resin as well as the washing process and the curing process with UV light. Except picture of the Study No. 4 shows the printing model with the normal SLA resin. A short video shows the UV curing process is also included in this post.