Workshop 1.1: Non-Planar Printing

Reflection

I found this workshop super interesting, especially since I’ve been curious about how robotic arms work for the past year. It was an intense experience, particularly since I have no background in Rhino or Grasshopper, let alone robotics. In just four or five days, I had to learn how to design a table using Grasshopper, export it for a robot, and conduct various tests. It was quite a whirlwind, but I gained a lot from it.

One aspect I enjoyed was learning about the material we used, which was cork paste. I found it fascinating; it’s a material still under investigation with a lot of potential. Exploring its resistance and seeing when it worked and when it didn’t was fun. However, it also presented challenges. Since the paste is super liquid and viscous, mixing it with gelatin and water meant it never dried during printing, causing our prints to collapse.

I also appreciated seeing how the robots operated, but one of the requirements was to use a plugin called Topos in Grasshopper, which is meant for generative design. The issue was that this plugin optimizes material distribution to handle required forces, but it prevents non-planar printing, which was the workshop’s goal. So, while we used Topos, we ended up doing planar printing, similar to traditional 3D printing. This was a bit frustrating, as we didn’t achieve the intended non-planar printing with the 6-axis robots.

Overall, it was interesting and gave me a better understanding of how these robots work, but I still find them quite complex. The workshop was intense for someone who didn’t have prior experience with the tools we used this week. Nonetheless, I learned a lot and had the chance to connect with people from other masters in IAAC, which was a great opportunity to learn even more.

You can find the link for the Iaac Blog here .

Deliverables

Here you can see a video of what we did during this workshop<3

CHIQUITABLE by Carmen Robres de Veciana

This is our final presentation

WORKSHOP1.1_FINALPRESENTATION by Clara Edith Carmona Hernández