#ardn610

[alyssabct]

Awkward Fruits - Digital Fabrication

Be pre-peared

Materials/Tools used: FDM

Process: For experiment four I wanted to expand from the past three experiments and to create a voronoi pattern on a poly surface, aka a pear. However, after two weeks of prototyping, tutorials, and trial and error I still couldn’t get grasshopper to work in my favour. Learning rhino and grasshopper has been a challenge and although I don’t want to give up I had to find a simple way that I could achieve the same result. So I used a website called voronator.com. Unfortunately, after I had sent my experiment off to be printed we went into another lockdown. Therefore, I am unsure of how the final product came out. This experiment for me was to understand grasshopper better, and ultimately create unique structures that I could experiment with a variety of materials. If I could have expanded further, in regards to what I gained from all of these experiments, I would have attempted to create a vessel. A fruit bowl to be precise that included this voronoi pattern, either using the stamp method or even using slipcasting from a 3D printed mould. This would have required a lot more time and further iteration on my part and I plan on continuing with the knowledge that I’ve acquired throughout these few weeks.

[alyssabct]

Awkward Fruits - Digital Fabrication

You gotta be kiwing me

Materials/Tools used: FDM, PLA, Clay

Process: When I began my third experiment I only knew what fruit I was interested in using, initially I was trying to branch out and find other functions available in the grasshopper plugin, I downloaded weaverbird and kangaroo and spent many hours trying to get something to work but nothing stuck out as significant and relevant to the project’s intent. I went back to the start, voronoi patterns and data objects, how could I create something with clay that would also incorporate an object that was applicable to the keywords we had outlined, I was still focusing on organic and engraved as my main keywords but as you’ll see it developed into something more that I feel encompasses all of the keywords. I was exploring for inspiration when I found clay stamps, I realised I could create a stamp with a voronoi pattern to emboss the clay that I had at home. I used a different coding method to extrude the voronoi pattern onto a rectangular box. It felt a bit incomplete, the examples I was looking at were spherical balls that could roll onto the clay, and it was something I wanted to replicate but as discussed this is quite difficult to achieve using grasshopper. Then I realised, thanks to Matt, I could manipulate the shape of the rectangle, bending into a u-shape - the stamp was now vastly improved. The object was organic, awkward to use, had texture and could engrave into the clay, ticking all the boxes there. I 3D printed the stamp and used it to roll it into the clay. I created three different experiments with clay. Ultimately, I really liked how this experiment turned out, especially because I was able to combine concepts from digital fabrication with what we had been shown in the wet labs. I would really like to continue experimenting with this stamping technique. I would like to create more stamps of a variety of shapes and patterns. 

[alyssabct]

Awkward Fruits - Digital Fabrication

An ap-peeling sight

Materials/Tools used: Laser-cutting, bamboo paper

Process: As I was researching about clay printing I came across a book called Advanced 3D Printing with Grasshopper: Clay and FDM. This introduced me to grasshopper a rhino plugin in which I was already very intrigued. I decided that I wanted to incorporate grasshopper in my rhino creative process. I was very interested in Voronoi patterns and how they reminded me of the fruit MRI scans that we were looking at, especially how the scan processes in real-time the shapes expand and contract, the voronoi pattern to me is almost an illusion of this action. Delving into grasshopper was particularly challenging for me. Initially, I wanted to emboss or engrave this Voronoi pattern into a banana or even print a banana that had a negative and positive imprint of this pattern that would join together. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that Grasshopper’s surface function is only compatible with a planar surface, which made the whole process extremely difficult to carry out as I’m still a novice. I experimented in many different ways and realised that I would have to conduct further research and carry on in another experiment as I was running out of time to complete my experiments. I decide to laser cut a Voronoi pattern into a banana and it would be very relevant to the project and a few keywords we were honing into - organic and engraved. I created the pattern keeping in mind a project from creative technologies that I really enjoyed called data objects. The project’s aim was to create an object that could visualise data in a unique and informative way. With this in mind, I created the pattern based on data I found about the yield a banana tree produces annually. But alas I ran into another problem, the pattern in the illustrator file was filled with hundreds of double lines and required a lot of cleaning up, something that would require more time than anticipated and out of worry for messing up a perfectly good banana, I decided to laser cut into bamboo paper something that was still organic and could be engraved into. Luckily the paper could handle the double lines and created a really wonderful multi-monotoned colour palette of burnt ambers and Sienna. The paper is quite thin allowed for light to shine behind the paper and it made us think of insect wings, water droplets on a spiders web. And on the topic of fruit, it reminded me of a cross-section of fruit almost as if you were to look at the fruit from under a microscope. I was quite pleased but also surprised with how this experiment turned out as it seemed that my expectation were always met with an obstacle but I managed to create something that made me think about other options and other ways I could reach a similar outcome to what I had initially planned. If I were to iterate on this experiment further, I would have loved to use a material that related to a banana, maybe using banana leaves or somehow making paper from fibres from banana trees.

[alyssabct]

Awkward Fruits - Digital Fabrication

Newton’s discovery

Materials/Tools used: FDM, PLA, Pinkysil

Process: My interest for my project was to find a way to incorporate the tools available at the wet labs with digital fabrication. I created an apple mould that I could use for the wet lab induction. The colour of the pinkysil matches quite well with the concept of an apple and it appears to be fitting for the object. What I really enjoyed about the process was that it was new to me, so there was a lot for me to observe and I have many thoughts for iterating from this experiment. My first observation was how well the shape of the apple worked for a mould, additionally, the 3D printed mould left unique markings that were picked up by the pinkysil - at first glance, the object appears to be 3D printed. If I were to further iterate on this experiment, I would like to experiment with different infill densities as well as an experiment by sanding down and filling gaps to create a smoother more polished effect. Another interesting part of the process was the fact that we had to rotate our mould around until the pinkysil stiffened and could create a hollow solid object. It made me wonder if there could be design improvements made to the mould because we poured the pinkysil directly into the mould as it lay flat, we wouldn’t need the pouring spout. This could lead to creating cylindrical or spherical shaped moulds that could be rolled around and possibly landscapes that could create different densities of pinksil that disperse around the mould. We definitely discovered this when we made our first mould, we had let it sit on its side after rotating which allowed for the pinksil to disperse and collect at one side/face of the object. This created a unique object, one side that was significantly more hollow and one side that was dense and heavy. This experiment and the other processes we were introduced to at the wet labs is definitely something I would like to continue on with going into project two.

[colabpixelpusher]

Why 4D printing is cool - its advantages and the possibilities it creates.

References:

Sheriff, J. (2013, November 29). This is why 4D printing is cool. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKTVsDPGQgg

[colabpixelpusher]

Organic inspirations and explorations for my Art and Design Digital Fabrication paper. Taking two digital fabrication papers at the same time is going to become confusing....