Aluminum award trophies cast from recycled aluminum

One day I had a conversation about how active drum & bass community members needed more recognition from our own underground scene. There are so many great things happening in our genre, and we wanted to thank people. So after some consideration, we decided to give out awards for Best Artist, Best Song, and Best Label in Drum & Bass annually. We cast the awards out of scrap aluminum, engraved them, 3D-printed a custom case, and have sent them to the winners each year since we came up with this idea.

We designed a couple of 3D models, finally landing on a pretty cool design. The one on the right is the final award. The left one is an earlier sand-casting test. The left one looked more like a donut than an award. Notice the “planet” behind the HTP logo.

First we made a 3D printed version to see how it would look in real life. Then we cut a mold into graphite stock into which we would eventually pour molten aluminum for the real awards.

We fired up a furnace, grabbed our scrap aluminum including old hard drives, fizzy drink cans, and serving dishes, then dropped them in the hot, hot crucible of hacking!

We cast a bunch of them, each consisting the equivalent of about 20-50 soda cans.

We engraved each of them, packed them in their own case, then shipped them around the world!