Digital Fabrication » agajz

reinFORCED

agajz — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 23:12:13 +0000

The design idea used to create the tile was a method of force fields. In creating this seamless pattern multiple spin forces were merged together and the effect of field lines was extended for better visualization and incorporation into the water evacuation system.

Force fields working with a different set of constraining circles.

Every line of the system is represented as an “escaping” curve. Each point tries to get away from the force field quickly, leaving those paths behind and creating the data tree structure. By playing with parameters like length, force, radius, distance in between, we could create a controlled distortion according to these field lines and force center.

Water evacuation tangencies meet force fields

The tile is divided into 3 parts according to the water evacuation points on the external edges: 2, 3 and 4. The force fields were placed accordingly on splines starting from these points of reference.

Overall composition of 6 tiles

The slope of the tile decreases gradually outwards following the rhythm of the water canals and pattern, enhancing the water evacuation.

The reference for the picture and original grasshopper script is: http://www.designcoding.net/force-fields-revisited/

Our edited grasshopper definition

To discover our milling strategy we experimented repeatedly with RhinoCam. In the end, for our design, we selected the 12 mm ballmill as it gave us the optimal finish and kept our machining time within the 2 hour limit. We first ran a horizontal roughing to carve the canals then curve machining to overlay the thin contour lines. In the end we didn’t do a perimiter engraving in order to allow for continuity of the lines over the edge and side of the tiles.

RhinoCam simulation strategy

Lotus

agajz — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:51:46 +0000

In the design process we aimed to experiment with different types of assembly. Each rode finishes with a sphere which arrives to a central assembly point.

The “gathering” joint’s outline is shaped in a way to have all the spheres inserted and let them move in all directions. Additionally, underneath the board (standing on 2cm blocks) there are wheeled-joints allowing the rods to move on the surface. The rails cut in the board are keeping the pipes in the assigned tracks.

The structure changes from a tightly angled curves with a lot of tension and stiffness to more loose hyperbolical shapes, which rigidity is kept because of a refined twist at the base.

Triangulated

agajz — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 17:43:37 +0000

The concept of the tower was to experiment with the flexibility of the wood and its thresholds of bending as the main tension force.

The whole structure is assembled of equal triangular bending modules. The modules are using the orientation of the wood’s fibers to enable small radii. The bending’s direction is perpendicular to the fibers’ direction, which means that we are not working against the material and the whole structure gains rigidity.

Another manipulation that we have incorporated are the vertical holes in each module- we have experimented with their distribution and length in different stages of the project in order to control the flexibility of each piece. There is a circular hole at the end of each “crack” to prevent them from spreading and breaking the geometry.

The levels are created by piling up 4 interlocked modules. The freestanding structure gained a tubal shape due to the vertical repetition.