Wesley Treat had his face scanned as part of a collaborative 3D model library project with other makers, and when he saw his own scan sitting in the archive he decided it deserved a more permanent form. The result is a strangely fascinating aluminum portrait, roughly life sized and built from dozens of flat welded panels, that now lives in his workshop and stops people in their tracks the moment they walk past it.
Treat works with aluminum regularly for sign making but had little welding experience with it going in. His xTool MetalFab handles both cutting and welding through a single handheld tool, and after a few practice runs on steel to get a feel for the machine he switched to aluminum and immediately noticed the difference. Aluminum conducts heat aggressively and will melt through without warning if the settings are off, so he dialed in shorter pulses and learned to feed in small amounts of filler wire to build each joint without punching holes through the material. Once the welds were looking consistent off camera, he moved on to the actual parts.
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The process started in Blender, where he reduced the polygon count on his scan until the model had that low resolution video game quality while still reading clearly as his face. He trimmed the body below the neck, tidied up the nose, and broke the hair into smaller sections to make the welding stages more manageable. Once the shape felt right he sent the file to an online unfolding tool called PaperMaker, which flattened the entire head into a series of flat 2D panels, complete with tabs and numbered edges to guide assembly.
Sheets of 0.063 inch metal were placed on the CNC bed next, and the machine cut the outlines cleanly while etching reference numbers right into each piece to keep everything organized. The end result was a stack of flat metal pieces that resembled a puzzle waiting to be assembled. Wesley arranged them all on the workbench and worked from the back of the head forward, tacking each panel into place with quick welds on the inside when possible to keep the outer surface clean.
Fitting everything together proved to be the most difficult part of the build. How so? Some edges needed a quick sanding, while others required some filing to sit flush. Once he found the right angle and travel speed, the laser welder handled the thin aluminum well, with localized heat closing gaps that were clean without warping the surrounding material. The two halves came together with the final seam hidden neatly beneath the hairline, and when the last weld cooled he stepped back to find a remarkably accurate metal version of his own face staring back at him.
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