FABRICATE 2011

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 23-28

ACHIM MENGES, SIMON SCHLEICHER & MORITZ FLEISCHMANN, RESEARCH PAVILION ICD/ITKE, INSTITUTE FOR COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN, STUTTGART UNIVERSITY

In 2010, the Institute for Computational Design (ICD)and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), both at the University of Stuttgart, designed, fabricated and constructed a temporary research pavilion. Demonstrating the latest developments in material-oriented computational design, material simulation and robotic production processes in architecture, the result is a ‘bending-active’ structure made entirely of robotically fabricated, elastically bent plywood strips. These strips are robotically manufactured as planar elements and subsequently connected so that elastically bent and tensioned regions alternate along their length

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 48

MARTA MALÉ-ALEMANY, JEROEN VAN AMEIJDE & VICTOR VIÑA, (FAB)BOTSCUSTOMISED ROBOTIC DEVICESFOR DESIGN & FABRICATION, AA, IAAC

Heliobot is a full-scale prototype of a solar-powered machine for on-site fabrication, capable of operating autonomously. It utilizes no additional energy other than that gained from the sun and operates by concentrating solar energy for burning, heating and cutting in the preparation of materials for future assembly. The device operates as a mobile robotic system using light sensors, DC motors and simple analogue electronic circuits based on differential behaviors (as in Mark Tilden’s BEAM robotics3). A sun-tracking system, comprised of four independent sensing and actuating modules, is able to align a Fresnel lens in order to achieve maximum solar concentration

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 53-56

ERMIS ADAMANTIDIS, CNCATENARYTOWARDS A DIGITAL FABRICATIONMETHOD FOR CATENARY SYSTEMS, THE BARTLETT, UCL

It is suggested that the coupling of a robotic process with the form-finding method of hanging models can yield new and meaningful results concerning the research and fabrication of funicular structures. The main objective is the following: to set a robotic process that can produce and manipulate catenary systems with the maximum possible freedom in the manipulation of these systems.

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 75-86

FABLAB, MATTER & MAKING, TAUBMAN COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE& URBAN PLANNING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

For Periscope Tower the arm is fitted with a hot-wire cutting end-effector, carving ruled geometries from EPS foam block. A custom robot controlled 4-ft-long hot-wire. The tower was fabricated using a custom-built, seven-axis robot-controlled hot-wire cutter at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Over 500 custom foam units are carved from stock blocks of EPS (expanded polystyrene) foam. These blocks are then stacked in a running bond and assembled into 3-ft-tall sub-assemblies.

Wave Pavilion is an architectural installation generated though computational processes and built using custom digital fabrication technology. To this end, a multi-use seven-axis robotic arm was paired with a bespoke CNC rod-bending device. A custom script was developed to analyse the digital geometry of the wave Pavilion and translate that information into a series of operations for the bender and robot. The data is exported as a series of commands in KUKA code.

Bent started with the intent to develop the tooling and workflow to directly bend small-diameter steel tubing using the robotic arm. By essentially attaching a split conduit bender to a pneumatic gripper, the robotic arm was tooled to produce multiple bends in a single piece of steel tube.

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 87-90

NICK PUCKETT, MATERIAL ANIMATION NEW INTERFACETO CUSTOM FABRICATION, ALTN RESEARCH, THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

RoboFold to develop a proof of concept model for the company’s production method. The proof-of-concept was undertaken at a scale of1:5 using off-the-shelf, six-axis robotic arms that were retrofitted with custom vacuum grippers. The production model looks to eliminate the need for tooling by forming sheet metal with a system of curved-crease scoring and folding by the robots. The overall goal for the prototype was to create a system that allowed multiple robots to cooperate in order to fold an individual piece. An additional challenge is that robotic arms are generally used for pick-and-place operations rather than following a highly controlled path needed for folding operation.

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 120

Structural Oscillations, Installation at the 11th Venice Architectural Biennale 2008

RuaiRi Glynn & BoBSheil, fabricate making digital architecture, 2011, pg 245

XAVIER DE KESTELIER, FOSTER + PARTNERS, DESIGN POTENTIAL FOR LARGE-SCALE ADDITIVE FABRICATION FREE-FORM CONSTRUCTION

The paper mainly revisits the idea of a digital design environment for additive fabrication first raised by Buswell and De Kestelier (2009) and possible future developments within that field. Contour Crafting has been developed at the University of Southern California by Dr Behrokh Khoshnevis. It is an additive fabrication technique that produces fixed width walls by robotically depositioning an internal and external trowelled skin. The cavity between these skins is then filled with a bulk material through that same robotic arm.