CHRISTOPHE BIHAN 3d Printing & Parametric Design
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Activity 1: Form Finding
Our Form Finding Method was based on this square wood panel, wooden dowels, rubber bands, and bubbles.
We really liked the idea of having a central dowel supported by the rubber bands kind of like a radio tower. We collaborated together and built multiple variations of this design in different dimensions.
THE TOP 3:
I was inspired by the middle one and I set out to create a design with an overhang.
Rhino Model
It ended up evolving into its own sort of form but I really liked it
I had a hard time getting this to slice and print in Cura.
Final Print
The print took a long time and because of all the supports, I had to use the Ultimaker so that it was easier to remove.
Half of the "rubber bands" didn't end up printing and I think that they need more support/infill and to be printed at a wider angle.
It looks really cool never the less.
Tutorials
Grasshopper Basics
I learned how to drop points, draw lines, and do polar arrays on those lines. I make a pretty com prism shape by duplicating and mirroring one of my designs.
Grasshopper Cylinders
There are so many different ways to make a single cylinder I was impressed. Piping a line segment is my favorite but I used the revolving line segment to make these shapes:
Torus
The easiest way to make a torus in grasshopper is to pipe a circle but the torus doesn't completely close so you have to use the "close" command and set boolean to complete it. I played around with the size and used a cylinder from the previous tutorial to try and make a cool shape.
Tessellation Basics
I learned how to use the hexagonal, radial, rectangular, and triangular components of tessellation. I wanted to use the polar array to make a nose cone-shaped object but it made a more complex radial instead.
Voronoi
Voronoi is my favorite tool so far. In the tutorial, I learned how to make a Voronoi pattern on a 2d surface and how to extract it for CNC cutting. I also learned how to use the pattern in 3d printing by extruding the shape. I started using voronoi for our ongoing project. I want to make a cube.
Illusion Pattern
I used Maelstrom and Bezier span components to make this crazy cool-looking illusion pattern. It pretty much creates a curve and rotates it around a point but the angle and spacing adjustments make them overlap. I understand most of the program but I have to think about the last couple of programs a bit more.
Manipulating Patterns
I used what I learned from the Voronoi tutorial to make a Voronoi cube. I tried making one for the 3d printer but I realized that I liked the idea of using the CNC machine more. I made a square in Voronoi and then scaled it so that it would be cuttable in the CNC machine. From there I made a t shape with 6 squares so that it would fold into a cube. Unfortunately, I had to scale it down a bit so that it would fit on the sheet metal but that also meant that there wasn't enough border to properly cut out my piece. I had to improvise a shape instead.
Curves & Surfaces
I learned a lot about curve parameters in this tutorial. I created circles along a curve, variable offset surfaces, and made these cool shapes with other shapes on them. I can see myself using this function a lot. The surface parameters were a bit more confusing for me.
Graph Mapper
This tutorial taught me how to use the graph mapper with multiple xy-planes. I though it was really cool how the mathematical graph correlated to different shapes.
Paneling with Surface Morph
I used surface morph to create a paneling effect around the brep cylinder. Although, in the tutorial, it did appear that the "morphed" objects had more detail than I accomplished.
Sphere Voronoi
This tutorial was quite long and a bit of a challenge but it is one of my favorite shapes. There was an issue with the loft command that prevented the sphere from rendering but once I replaced it, it worked fine.
Voronoi Cell
I used the Voronoi cell component and then used weaverbird to smoothen the object out, but It didn't exactly work as anticipated so I had to settle with this shape.
Elk Basics
This tutorial looks the most complex by far, but it's probably my favorite. At first, I downloaded the wrong ELK and I was stuck on it forever because I was missing the SRTMTopo component but after redownloading the right one, everything was fine. The size of the models is HUGE. My computer had a hard time rendering it and Rhino seemed to not work. I think it is awesome you can take this much data and detail and put it into a printable form.
Creating 3D objects with Grasshopper
I didn't save the sphere Voronoi so I had to rebuild it in the tutorial. Our idea was to make a funky disco ball by filling the Voronoi gaps with cut out pieces of mirrored acrylic but we realized that it might be a challenge because the flat acrylic won't fit onto the spherical shape.
Building off of the original sphere voronoi script, Ausar and I had to determine the proper dimensions
and thicknesses for our specific process. Of our most important additions was the joining of a mesh loop so that we can hang the ball from the ceiling.
We sliced it in Ultimaker and were shocked at how long it was going to take; after all we did want it as big as possible but I wish I had considered this before.
To fill the gaps with acrylic, I baked the inside of the voronoi sphere and split the hemispheres. I then continued to flatten each polyline by hand. It was quite tedious. Even so, the polylines did not rest flat, so I did a project to c plane to make them so. I am still concerned that the flat cut-outs won't fit in the holes but we are taking a gamble on it. I hope that if it doesn't fit seamlessly, we can at least glue it together without too much distortion.
Because Ausar was sick, we fell a bit behind in the fabrication process. I am hoping that we can piece everything together within the week. We are just waiting for the print to finish and for the mirrored acrylic to arrive.
Unfortunately, one of the nosels of the Ultimaker got clogged, and we had to scrap our print. This will push us back significantly in piecing it together.
After several attempts, we were finally able to successfully, print the sphere. There were a ton of supports, so it had to sit in the bucket of water for a while.
From there, we moved on to laser-cutting the mirrored pieces. We made an error the first time when we cut the wrong side of the acrylic.
Because the cut-outs weren't exactly flat, It was a challenge to fit them in the holes. I had to work together with Ausar to effectively glue all the pieces.
Finally, after countless obstacles, we were able to complete the "disco ball"
I am very satisfied with our final product and I am happy that we used some extra time, both in and outside of class, to get it done the right way instead of giving up on it. It is really cool to look at because you get little glimpses of light and reflection from all around the room. I regret not being more careful with the glue because there were some instances where the glue got on the mirror and affected the polished look of the surface. Still, after all the sick days, misprints, and tedious gluing, I am proud of our work.
Shapeways Project
mood board
I have been inspired by the signet rings that kings used to stamp wax letters. I want to make my own signet ring that can leave my own signature impression. I will use a grasshopper tutorial to design the ring so that I can get it to the exact dimensions that I want. From there I will make the engravings in rhino.
process
With inspiration from a youtube tutorial, I used a plethora of commands to make this huge grasshopper script. It took an insain amount of time but creating the signet ring through grasshopper has allowed me to have complete controll over the dimentions and shape of the ring. Some of the most important commands were curve, blend curve, network suirface, and brep commands. I also used the tools from the peacock plug in.
I used my Initials as a text object. Then I mirrored, extracted, and boolean differenced them onto the ring. It got the ok in shapeways and I 3d-printed a prototype. The Ring was a little small and I lost some detail but I will fix both in my final version.
I am continuing to work on the ring, I have a lot of time over the break so I am going to take my time and try to make it really cool. My main concern right now is wall thickness.
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