The Lotus Flower it’s a kinetic and dynamic structure.

The goal of the exercise was to producing 3d printed pieces and explore the design opportunities arising from the potential and limitations of the technology to create a dynamic assembly with 2mm diameter rods linked together by 3d printed pieces.

Our idea was to design just one joint. This joint should had the capabilities of generate through the connections between themselves and with the help of the elastic nature of the tubes in order to form two geometrical moments, one that’s goes up and another one than goes to the sides.

The dynamic nature of the joint allows a level of movement between the rods themselves in a translation system by moving the rods in to a circle to move within itself and transfigure into a bigger or smaller structure.

The joints were designed to take advantage of the 3d printer’s ability to create small, yet detailed 3-dimensional objects. Each joint has multiple holes to allow rods to fit in 8 different directions.  The dynamic movement of the structure resembles that of a curtain. The structure can take several forms by sliding the joints through the rods: the looping (side) rods slide along a central rod arc. The transition exposed in the photo overlays is between two basic positions: one where the side rods are lying flat on the board and one where they form a full scale volume following the arc.

We created joints of 3 different sizes. Each of the two largest joints connects half of the side rods, so that they are able to rotate from a common point, whilst the smaller joints fix the ends of the rods, allowing linear movement along the arc that passes through the central joint channel.

Printing on the z-corp machine (composite powder) limited the joint’s strength, so further experimentation on possible forms was challenging due to the joints breaking, but nonetheless, we discovered the component’s tension thresholds and exploited its capabilities.

GROUP 02
Karl Francalanza
Dimitrios Aidonis
Tobias Grumstrup Lund Øhrstrøm

Moving rods – movie

Rods are still

Structure in full shape

Joints on the structure

The printed joints

Derived from a hyperboloid of 1 sheet, the Hyperblob is a free standing structure made up of 25 2mm fiberglass rods, 33mm long, through two 3D printed rings, 150 mm in diameter. Hyperboloids can be found in architecture and are based on the concept of a ruled surface: through every point on the surface lies a straight line. Hyperblob is an exploration of curvature through the use of straight lines. The structure has a variety of movements, in all of the cartesian coordinates, due to the 3D printed joints.

The Digital Fabrication world has introduced the magic of 3D printing to a variety of audiences. As students, designers, and thinkers it was our task to explore this new technology and create a joint was only possible using this process. Using this criteria we produced a repetative joint that comprised of openings, angled at 20 degrees, as well as a bi-axial interlocking connection mechanism. Constrained by a bounding box of 50x50x100 mm, we printed 26 individual joints that when combined form two seperate rings.  The Hyperblob comes to life when rods pass through each ring allowing the structure to stand, move, and deform depending on the users manipulation.