Cutting Supersurfaces
27 February - 4 March
Last updated
27 February - 4 March
Last updated
This week we will be using the laser cutter. I am no stranger to this device, I've used it since my first year at CMD. For my SRP points I also taught a class at the Metis Montessori Lyceum in Amsterdam. We taught the first year high school students how to use illustrator and designing shapes. We made keychains with the students on the laser cutter out of wood and acrylic. It was fun to use the laser cutter, but it's safe to say i'll never teach a class of 13-year-olds again.
3 years ago, assembling one of the first boxes I made on the laser cutter.
Showcase the contrast of two opposing material properties using sheet material and a lasercutter. Fate has decided that I will be exploring the contrast between rigid and flexible materials.
Movement has no impact on the shape of the object.
The shape alters and moves freely when disturbed.
The individual pieces are rigid, but they behave flexible as a whole.
A middle ground: Movement may alter the overall shape, but the original formation of shapes stays the same.
I chose to use 5mm plywood, simply because I like working with it and it is easy to cut with the laser cutter. I also like that you can use many other techniques on plywood which are already well documented. I bought a 2 square meter sheet at Gamma for €5.
I used the Makerslab library cutting presets for 4mm soft plywood.
I want don't want to make the final product fully flexible. Instead I want to remain some static elements. Plywood is very unlikely to ever be flexible like a fabric, so hard pieces are almost inevitable.
A chainmail is made by interlocking metal ringlets. There is no other material involved to make the otherwise stiff metal behave flexible.
NASA developed their own variation on the classic chainmail, using flat panels to close the gaps between the ringlets while maintaining the flexibility and durability of the original system.
This (very expensive) chainmail inspired skirt that consists of multiple panels connected to each other.
In chronological order of creation
5mm plywood, Hot glue, Denim (scavenged from AMFI's sample pile)
One of the first things that came to my mind when I thought of the word flexible was fabric. Although not very flexible, I chose denim because I thought the wooden tiles would adhere well to it. It takes a bit of force, but the material is indeed flexible.
The space between the wooden tiles widens and narrows when the material is being bent. Hot glue might not have been the best choice to adhere the two materials. When choosing a type of glue, make sure it will not become hard when dry, or you will lose the flexibility of the fabric.
5mm plywood (lasercut), Hot glue, Mesh lace trim (bought at the market)
For this sample I used the same wood and pattern pieces, but changed the fabric. Inspired by mosaic bathroom tiles that come glued on mesh, I found that a material that has holes in it will allow the hot glue to adhere way better.
There is a noticeable difference in flexibility, the denim even seems stiff compared to the mesh. The light mesh allows air to pass trough, and makes the wood the most important element of the formation.
The best way to glue the tiles to the material without having it stick to your working surface is to fix the fabric on a jar with a rubber band, so there is nothing touching the glue.
48 rings made of 5mm plywood (lasercut)
After experimenting on fabrics, I decided that I wanted to try to avoid incorporating another medium to give the plywood it's flexibility. I used a classic chainmail pattern to create this material. It consists solely of wooden ringlets.
When making ringlets for a chainmail, make sure that the material can bend slightly to allow it to latch onto other ringlets. If the material is too stiff it might break. You can try to control this by changing the width of the ringlets to allow for more strength, or pick a thinner material for more flexibility. Some of the ringlets still broke, but if you are careful it's not very difficult. Interlocking the ringlets took me about 10 minutes.
Sometimes when you're not careful enough a ringlet breaks. You can control the sturdiness of your ringlets by changing the width or the material. You can see all the layers of plywood, and how the orientation of the grain of the wood alternates every layer to create a stronger material.
This is a previous version of the chainmail, with 4cm diameter ringlets. This material was too large to be put in the sample box, but moved the same way as the final product.
There is quite a lot of waste product when cutting the ringlets the way I did. This might be something you want to take into consideration.
48 rings made of 3mm uncoated cardboard (lasercut)
Bending the wooden ringlets takes quite some force, and I was looking for a way to assemble the chainmail easier and faster. Using the same file on the lasercutter, I tried to create the ringlets out of cardboard.
A simple change in material gives the construction a very different feeling from the same wooden construction. Also notice how the sound of a material has an impact on the way it feels.
Although the bending of the materials was indeed way easier, It was not convenient to work with the cardboard on the laser cutter. The burnt cardboard transfers onto everything and leaves quite a mess. My hands were completely black and I left fingerprints everywhere. I also find that there is still too much friction between the individual ringlets, and I am not a fan of the way it moves.
Instead of using the cutting presets for 4mm soft plywood, I used the presets for 3mm cardboard.
25 tiles made of 4mm plywood (lasercut), 0.205 mm Sufix fishing line
I decided that if I was going to use a medium to join tiles, I didn't want it to be as noticeable as the fabric. I chose fishing line as it is almost invisible.
It took ages to do this. I found that I didn't have much control on the tension of the line. It is slippery and I kept losing the line because, you guessed it, it's almost invisible.
I do like the final outcome, as it is very flexible and the slippery fishing line causes barely any friction.
I initially tried a different type of tile, but the shape was very uncomfortable and hard to join using the fishing line. The holes were too close together and there wasn't much allowance for flexibility because of the shape and the size of the tiles.Therefore I resorted to simple tiles that can be joined by spiraling the line through holes.
The laser cutter chooses a random path to cut out the tiles. For parametric design, it's better to design one single tile that you can copy and paste, but as you can see here this means that the laser cutter cuts some lines twice. This can cause burns or uneven edges.
I used tape to keep the tiles aligned when stitching them together.
25 tiles made of 5mm plywood (lasercut), 40 2mm zip ties
After spending quite some time looking for the fishing line I kept losing, I wanted to find an easier way of joining the tiles together. Here you can see that the material loses almost all of its flexibility. There is a lot of friction between the zip ties and the tile. This can be due to the fact that the zip ties are pulled quite tight, or because of the material of the zip ties. Also the zip ties were never meant for the purpose of allowing the material it bonds to move. Quite the contrary, because they are made to immobilize the materials they bond and keep them in place.
We now know that the method of joining the tiles has a huge impact on the flexibility.
20 5mmx100mm tiles of 5mm plywood (lasercut), 0.205 mm Sufix fishing line
Even though I didn't want to, I resorted back to using the fishing line as a joining method as it had the low friction and high flexibility I wanted.
I really didn't feel like going through the horror of having to stitch the fishing line through 225 holes again, so inspired by continuous tracks on off-road vehicles, I made the tiles long and narrow. This way there were also less joining points needed in the material, which made it fast and easy to connect the tiles.
I like how consistently the material bends. The fishing line also allows for some horizontal shifting of the tile formation.
Part of the assignment was to put the created materials in a sample book. I decided to put all the samples in a box on hangers, because i wanted the materials to have the ability to move. I also want to engage the "reader" to touch and feel the objects, pass them around, or compare them to their own project.
I added this document as a reference for each sample.
This way readers in the Makerslab can immediately recreate the techniques.
For me this was quite an easy and laid back week. It definitely helped that I was already quite experienced with the machine, so i didn't have to spend much time on figuring that out. Most of my files were created in mere minutes. The idea that my material was very cheap made me feel comfortable, I was not afraid to make any mistakes which I sometimes am when using expensive material, so i will use cheap materials in the future too if that eases my mind.
I was still sick during the kickoff, so I didn't really know that there should be a "gradient" in the created material properties. Instead my research is a journey of creating the product that shows the property contrast the best. I'm very happy with the end result and the concept of my "sample book"
I used for the finger-jointed box. I used the same plywood i used for my samples.
