Lecture 09: Digital Fabrication

DIGITAL FABRICATION: PARAMETRIC WORKFLOW PROCESS

System = unit + organization + parametric variation

Digital fabrication for our purposes will describes the process of going from parametric information in the virtual environment to the physical environment. The purpose of physical fabrication here is more concerned with human experience and ritual than form and metaphor (Allen). We are concerned the everyday experience, the phenomena (Christian Norberg-Schulz, Ando), to affect human life.

1.0 Principles of Digital Fabrications (Lisa Iwamoto)

Forming
Folding
Contouring
Tesselating
Sectioning

1.1 Forming

Used in conjunction with other techniques

Digitally fabricate the mold then manually cast the form

Digitally fabricate the form, manually cast the mold, manually recast the form

Use various materials for both mold and the form, Scalable

Cost effectively creates non-standard mold making

1.2 Folding

When a 2D material is manipulated by cutting, folding, or scoring to become a 3d object. The structure itself can be linear, parabolic, or crystalline.

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1.3 Contouring

Contouring is created by subtractive carving of a solid. Carving is the traditional hand method. Digital fabrication with a CNC router can achieve greater complex geometry. The direction of carving depends on the router: 3, 4, or 5 axis. Cutting tools can be attached to robotic arms to cut surfaces, as in the ceramic example below.

Gradient Scale by SPAN Architects and Manfred Hermann. Process:

Resources:

Mattersync Magazine. “Gradient Scale.” 10 October 2005. (1 Feb 2013.)

Stefano Andreani, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo, Aurgho Jyoti, Nathan King, and Mar-tin Bechthold. “Flowing matter: Robotic fabrication of complex ceramic systems.” Harvard University. (1 Feb 2013.)

1.4 Tessellating (Tiling)