Melissa March: Laser Cutting - Exercises

Goal: to explore the possibilities of the laser cutting by finding form through planar layers or serial construction.

Exercise One: Waffles
Create a surface form and construct it with a waffle structure. In class, Professor Scott showed us how to create a waffle structure using a grasshopper script. I created a surface by drawing several curves and lofting between them. The script did most of the work in creating the waffle structure, but it was customized by asking for input on material thickness and notching, etc. After going through this process, I laid it out for the laser cutter and cut my waffle structure out of cardboard.

Attempt One: the problem with this is that the form is a little too crazy. It would have worked better if I had more struts.


Attempt Two: this one worked much better, but when you run the script remember to save it because you will need to refer to it when assembling. I tried to assemble it without referencing it, and it was very frustrating and didn't turn out right. Lesson learned: use script to assemble.


Exercise Two: Connection pieces
This exercise consisted of first exploring forms with the pieces that professor Scott had created. After getting a feel for how it worked, he challenged us to create our own pieces. These are the pieces that I came up with.



And here are some forms that I generated with those pieces.

Melissa March: FDM Modeling - Project 2

Goal: to find a form through polygonal modeling, develop that form with techniques described in class, and produce an object with the FDM machine.


At this time we were just learning Maya. We were seeing a wealth of possibilities open up with this software. Professor Scott showed us how to 'sculpt' in Maya using basic forms and manipulating them using simple commands (like scale, rotate, move, etc.). The form for my first project was not created using this sculptural process and I wanted to try my hand at it. As part of the lecture, Andrew showed us a honeycomb structure. Later, I created my own honeycomb structure.


I created this form by first making the basic cylinder in Maya (to the specifications that the FDM machine could print). Then I triangulated the faces and created the honeycomb. And LASTLY I found that I could play with the form of the objects by pushing and pulling the control points of the honeycombed cylinder with the soft select. The object turned out as pictured, it passed the 'closed form' test in rhino, approved by P. Scott and off to the printer!!

Or so I thought. Turns out there were some problem areas.

EXHIBIT A: See how the bottom edge is not touching the ground plane. Problem.

EXHIBIT B: See the 'rim' of the cylinder is all jaggedy. Problem.



So, even though my form had 'passed the test' it wasn't going to work the way it was. Back to the drawing board! Remember how I had adjusted the form AFTER I created the honeycomb? Therein lies the problem. When I did that and began adjusting the form some of the faces intersected themselves, which is a big no no. But one of the benefits of Maya is that is saves your history. Back in time I went, way back to the form as a cylinder, no honeycombing.

I then sculpted the form FIRST before doing the honeycomb stuff. This worked out much better. I also made sure that the cylinder touched the ground plane and that the 'rim' edge was smooth. And here's how it turned out.


As you can see, it's a little crankier than the first one. I played around a little more with the sculpting part and I think I came up with a more interesting form. One thing I did differently (that Professor Scott helped me with) was to show the polygonal form of the honeycomb. When you are modeling and adjusting the honeycomb, you see the edges of the triangulated faces. Well, I wanted that to be apparent in the final form, as well.



If you compare it to my first one (orange) the edges aren't defined. They are smooth (minus the voids of the honeycomb). But the final form (red) has those edges defined. It is a subtle difference but one I really wanted.
After my form was printed, I sprayed it with a good coat of clear coat so that the form would accept paint. I then painted it with a metallic spray paint because I wanted light to reflect off of it. From here, I will paint the outside a different color. I am thinking I will place a light source inside of the form because I think it would create really interesting shadows.

Melissa March: CNC Milling - Project 1

Goal: to create a modular unit, with which I could create a platonic solid.

1. Tetrahedron | 4-sided (Tetra = 4 )
2. Hexahedron | 6-sided (Hexa = 6 )
3. Octahedron | 8-sided (Octa = 8 )
4. Dodecahedron | 12-sided (dodeca = 12 )
5. Icosahedron | 20-sided (Icosa = 20 )

Dodecahedron | 12-sided (dodeca = 12 )

Background: Only five solids can be made up of regular polygons even though millions of shapes are composed of irregular polygons. Due to this rarity, both Aristotle and Plato asssumed they formed the building blocks of matter and so matched the five solids with the four classical elements plus ether. The first three belong to Pythagoras and the last two belong to Theaetetus. Plato was not the first to think of them but these five solids became an important part of both practical and mystical geometry. The word hedron simply means surface, and although the solids look complex they are actually quite simple.

I chose to use a dodecahedron as my platonic solid. I chose this form because it consists of 12 regular pentagon faces. This means that I would create and develop one pentagon surface that I would later replicate twelve times. Finally, I will assemble all of these surfaces into one dodecahedron. My intention is for this dodecahedron to surround a light fixture.

Means and Methods: Rhino > CNC Millin

g Machine > Vacuum Former > Assemblage by Hand

I began developing the pentagon surface by starting in 2D. I figured out that to tessellate the pentagon I needed to subdivide it into five equilateral triangles. Each triangle in itself is a unit, which is rotated about the center. It is also crucial that each triangle is symmetrical about the base. This is important because the unit will not line up with another unit if this does not occur.

I chose four control points equally distributed along the edge of the pentagon. I named them A and B knowing that A and B will differ in location of the Z-axis. So, along the edge I have A, B, B, A. Point A occurs at ½” in the Z axis. The B c

ontrol points occur at 1 ½” in the Z-axis. I also had to choose where the vertices of the pentagon occurred in the Z-axis. Those occur at 1" in the Z-axis.

Once I understood the shape of my curve, I drew this in Rhino. I then copied and rotated this curve around the edges of the pentagon. From there, I lofted these curves. This was no easy task, as there were many intersections to deal with, but Professor Scott helped me to resolve these issues. We accomplished this by segmenting the problem areas with curves so that they could be lofted properly.

Production: Above, my pentagonal surface has been milled and is ready for the next step!

From here, I took my form

to the vacuum former. Next update will show the post production work and assemblage!

After I made these plastic forms, I used them as a molds to create these silicone forms. I used Oomoo (purchased at Ex Libris) to create these forms. What was really neat was that they picked up on the texture on the plastic and that translated onto the silicone form. With these silicone forms, I am free to explore other options without having to worry that I might ruin my original form.

So, after I created these silicone forms I created a composition using four of those forms and created a plaster mold for that composition. I will use this plaster mold to cast glass. I was very happy to see that the plaster picked up on those textural details, too!

Since vacuum-forming the hard plastic, I realized the the post-production work that would be required to turn those plastic molds into units of my dodecahedron was just too laborious and time-consuming. So I looked for other materials. One material that vacuum-formed incredibly was craft foam (found at Michael's). Though this formed great, I was concerned that it wouldn't allow enough light through (because I intend for my dodecahedron to form around a light fixture). With a flashlight, Professor Scott and I tested it and it did allow light to emit. So, back to the vacuum-former!

Here you can see my process: I stapled the forms together and discovered that I would need to make tabs to connect them to each other. The third image (above) shows that process and the tools I used.

Here's how I assembled this thing. I used small clips (from my fridge) to briefly hold the two adjoining units together while I stapled the tabs together. NOTE: the depth of the tab comes from the allowable space from the stapler. This was an important discovery. You can see I am using a baby stapler because it has the smallest profile, which allows you to staple very closely to the edge. I assembled piece by piece. While I was assembling, I learned that it HAD to be this material because it needed to fold in on itself at some moments to allow pieces to come together properly. A hard plastic would not have that ductility.

These images above show the pieces of the light fixture that I purchased for the light. I bought this way back when I was designing the milled piece in Rhino. I designed it so that the glass globe would fit into the dodecahedron - which means I created a mock up model in Rhino of the units forming the dodecahedron so I could size it properly. Here you can see that I needed to design a piece for the top of the hanging lamp. It was very important to design it in such a way that the light could still be disassembled so that it's possible to change the light bulb when needed.

The above images show how I treated the top piece and the finished product. Because this is a hard-wired light fixture I simulated what it would look like lit by using the pieces from a form about 80% connected together and fitted the opening around my desk lamp.