Clay Armature
Submitted by Don Omlie
In the early years of Design Staff, a full sized clay model armature for the automobile and truck design was built out of heavy wood material with shaped slats of wood to hold the clay to the armature. Occasionally, as the design was changed, portions of the wood armature would be exposed. When this happened, the work was halted on that design. The total armature was sent back to the shop for rework to accept the new design. This happened in the design of the new model which resulted in a great loss of design time.
Bob McLean (Research Studio head) came to me one day with a block of styrofoam and told me to study the feasibility of using styrofoam on the armature, checking out how the clay would adhere to the foam and what the workability was. A complete modeling program was set up. The results of the process were terrific. A coupe was set up to be modeled. The design was changed to require cutting into the styrofoam-remodeling and continuing the design. The total modification process took very little time. The armature was not sent back to the shop for rework.
As a result of the success of this process, a new armature was designed, covered with blocks of foam. Using templates of the design to be modeled, the foam was trimmed down to accept the necessary clay. To the best of my knowledge, this was still the modeling process used when I retired in 1987.
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