Day 2

Schedule

Public schedule (day 2)

FDM Printing Review

Material

Nozzle

Layers

Toolpath

Digital Fabrication Pipeline

Computer-aided Design (CAD) -- Modeling an idea in 3D modeling software like Blender, Maya, Rhino
Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAM) -- Converting models to machine instructions using slicers
Computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) -- Machines execute toolpath commands to produce the physical object using the material of choice
- 3D printers, milling, laser cutters, robot arms, embroidery machines, etc.

This pipeline works well for plastic printers.

However, once we change materials and machines,
using CAD -> CAM workflow to arrive at machine instructions may become problematic.

Some examples:

1 - Clay printers cannot stop extruding clay because of their extrusion mechanism.

Slicers cannot handle continuous printing well.

2 - Slicers may generate a weak toolpath for your use case.

Slicer method failed when we developed our fabric printing method.

3 - We can leverage the material properties as design elements when we can create the toolpath directly.

Craft practices use various materials and techniques.
Therefore, using digital fabrication in craft often requires more profound control of the machine's behavior.

Instead of creating a 3D model and slicing it, we can directly design the toolpath of our print. This operation should take into account the material properties and machine specifications.

Some examples

Aestus Vases
by
Oliver Krieg (ODK)

TOOLPATHING TO DEFINE FORM

(video at the link)

Star Tessellation
by
Drummond Casterton

TOOLPATH STEPOVER AS A DESIGN FEATURE

Listening Cups
by
Timea Tihanyi & Audrey Desjardins

DATA-DRIVEN MACHINE OPERATION

Other Vessels
by
Matt Hutchinson

TOOLPATH STEPOVER AS A DESIGN FEATURE

CoilCAM: a toolpath programming system for clay 3D printing

Sam Bourgault, a member of the Expressive Computation Lab developed CoilCAM.

CoilCAM is a visual programming tool that enables the creation of custom toolpaths to create 3D-printed clay objects.

With CoilCAM, we can perform basic transformations to each layer using simple mathematical functions.

Layer transformations

Radius

CoilCam starts by generating a 2D circular path on the x and y-axes of a series of points along the circle.

We can control the position of the points to create different shapes.

Scale

The initial shape gets repeated to produce a 3D toolpath, similar to how we stack the cardboard pieces to create a 3D object. CoilCAM enables us to scale each layer as we move upwards.

Put your mathematician hat on...

what function has a growing (increase) behavior?

The line function allows a linear increase in the radius of a circular path.

Rotation

Lastly, we can rotate each layer to create amazing patterns. In CoilCAM all rotations happen with respect to its center.

CoilCAM Demo

The period of a wave is the length of a complete cycle. Using CoilCAM, you can think about the period as the number of groups in which you will separate the points in each layer.

The amplitude of a wave is the highest value it reaches. In CoilCAM, when we increase the amplitude, we increase the distance from the point to the center of the circle.

How can we use these concepts to control the points in a circle to create a star?

Activity: Designing toolpaths using CoilCAM

Pizza LUNCH

Activity: 3D-printing designs with clay

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