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 main idea for our joint is to create a tower and manipulate its form in real time in order to achieve several different structures. It is formed by 4 rods in the middle which are the sustain of the tower and allow it to move up and down; then, other 6 on the outside, works as a all to create a structural “skin” or “facade”.

The joint is formed by three parts: The first one is the core which slide up and down using as a path the 4 rods in the middle. Then, because we wanted to have a 360 degrees organic movement of the outer rods, we created two components to allowed us the movement in the XY axis and in the YZ axis, like an increasing and decreasing living tower.

The joint is formed by 13 pieces; the central piece, which is the most important, is the one that allows us to assemble all the elements; then, there are 6 “U” pieces than provides the horizontal movement, that means in the XY axis. Finally, there are 6 “arms” or “legs” pieces that works in vertical movement, the YZ axis; all this configuration provides a movement of expansion and contraction to the entire structure.

The idea was to create a structure that was deploy-able by unfolding and at the same time to imitate the flowers that open and close with the sun (nyctinasty).

This was done by using a ring at the base along which the joints slide to help close the open structure.

Two joints were used to create the structure above. The first kind of joint helps move the rods along the ring.  The second joint was to ensure two rods  in place to provide the pattern required. These joints were not fixed to allow different patterns along the two rods if needed. The curvatures of the rods help keep these joints in any required position.

The simple mechanism used allows the curved rods to move along the rings not only providing two, but numerous possibilities of creating openings along various points of the ring.

The structure can be assembled and disassembled easily depending on the size of the base ring required. It could could also be developed to form the framing of a structure used for shelter. This could either be temporary or permanent.

The primary goal was to design a kinetic structure that is supported by crossing elements of the same material to each other. This ultimately created a self supported free standing structure with the help of crossing components.

We created several axes by grouping rods together to make the flexible components more durable. To achieve a durable structure that would support itself, we used two three-pieced rods and one four-piece rod. We joined all of these elements with by designing 3d printed joints.

There is a one-hole joint, three-hole joint and a four hole joint. Using the laser cutter helped us attach the joints to the board precisely.

1st geometrical moment

2nd geometrical moment

.gif picture showing the movement of the structure (press on it)

Group 13

Asif Rahman

Sinem Samanci

Irina Shaklova

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

The design of our tower was driven by several criteria: || maximization of material usage
|| repetition of a single member
|| achieving of several possible configurations

As a result of a successful implementation of the first and the second criteria, we were able to make use of 97% of the available material, consequently reaching the height of nearly 5 meters in the virtual model simulation. Nevertheless, the height of the virtual model was modeled in the “perfect world” conditions, thus not reflecting such important physical criteria as material stress capabilities and the vertical load distribution in a structure of this type. Having assembled several sections of the tower into their envisioned arrangement, we confirmed that such material as wood fails in direct correlation with the grain its cut along and the amount of stress it experiences in the thinnest joinery areas. We realized that in order to reduce the stress||strain loads in our tower we need to drastically reduce the total height of the structure and hence tackle the third design criteria, multiple configurations using a repetitive single element.

The base unit of the structure is a slightly curved uniform strip of wood that interlocks with two more identical elements to form a stiff, yet elegant triangle. Further mirrored upwards the newly formed two triangles visually mimic an “expanded metal” element, and are connected via cross-joints in the center and longitudinal joint at the vertices of the triangle. Once unified into one and rotated 30 degrees the units begin locking into each other, thus reinforcing the overall structure of the tower. Lastly, to break the uniform look of the structure we introduced the “turning torso” movement, physically rotating one third of the overall tower height by 15 degrees at each joint.

95 % use of material

Top View

Assembling pieces to form a triangle || 2 triangle form one unit || 2 units joined by cross joints

Scale Comparison

STOPMOTION

The final dimensions of the scratch joint were determined by the material’s flexibility as well as the joint’s arm length.  The 3mm wood gave us optimal flexibility to bend pieces and form connections adding strength through tension and compression.  The scratch tower went through many iterations: first, we looked at the geometry of a spiral. Creating a spiral configuration would provide us with maximum strength, but left us with less opportunities to play with the system.  Secondly, we combined a spiral base with an organic flow that formed an unstable tower.  Final build experiments taught us that we could achieve a more stable structure as long as we had a strong base, this allowed us to grow our tower from a ridged base and explore the possibilities of natural form using one component as well as experiment with the tower’s maximum height.

Start from Scratch!

The tower raises through the combination of three types of joints which work with friction and blocking strategies. The first type makes possible the connection between the external X pieces, the second one allows the interlocking between the X shaped pieces and the horizontal frame, while the third type joins the vertical crosses with the horizontal frame.