Test castings

Moving along in my project I realized I needed to solidify my ideas and come up with a final form for these objects to manifest themselves. Taking inspiration from my previous test of casting the foam cutouts in plaster, and my prior experiences in concrete, I decided to try casting these shapes in concrete. For

Exploring Presentation

As the end of the semester nears, I’m beginning to think about presentation and how I can effectively show my research. Here are some pictures of the work I brought into my thesis crit, showing how I displayed the work for that class. Our first class got canceled so I had 2 setups over 2

Syringe Pump Exploration

Syringe Pump?

Building off my caulk gun idea, I thought it might be useful to use liquids such as paint or acetone in a controlled manner. Enter the syringe pump. I found some files on thingiverse that got me started and allowed for a quick proof of concept. However, the design was both lacking and intended for

The Caulk Gun

Moving on from pyrography, I started testing out some messier and more unpredictable outputs. The first test, tubes of construction adhesive. Machine in action video (Google drive Link)

Adding Efficiency and Polish

My initial tests prints worked but left a lot to be desired. First and foremost I had to change the movement. The hand drawn arcs were nice but a hassle to reconfigure when I wanted to change the size, or the order that the machine draws the dots. So I dove into grasshopper, drawing the

Up and Running

The Machine Works (Mostly) Dylan, my modified 3D printer is up and running, creating pyro-graphic recreations of supplied images. The images are processed through a grasshopper algorithm which maps the brightness values of the image to time values for the burner to remain on the wood. While there are still some minor issues to work

Preliminary Printer Tests

Getting acquainted with the printer interface This week I performed some initial tests and trials to see how my wood burning idea would manifest. I connected the printer to pronterface and sent move and temperature commands. I also played with grasshopper, looking at Hoover’s custom plugin to generate g-code from grasshopper curves, but was unsuccessful

Research Project Ideas

Ever since freshman year, I have been enthralled with art making machines. Especially the three axis precision machines we call CNCs such as 3d printers, laser cutters, routers, and plasma cutters. These devises are capable of incredible additive and subtractive manufacturing, executed with precision, on a repeatable basis. These qualities are attractive, but I’m also

Encoding Environment Workshop

Marantha Dawkins’s workshop on pattern building in grasshopper was a great example of how versatile parametric design can be. The workshop involved sampling brightness values from an image, then mapping those values to constructed pattern pieces in grasshopper, recreating the image though abstract shape. From there the patterns were traced in hot glue on a