3D Rapid Prototyping

Mimicking the real world

These above ripples were made in Maya using 'Pond' and 'wake'. I am really interested in recreating, simulating or mimicking real world systems and then printing them out as real objects through rapind prototyping. I am starting to work with the Computing Dept at Swansea University to mimic real life systems and then 'bake' the geometry and print it out using starch and acrylic rapid prototype printing.

Making moveable parts

There is something incredible about the new acrylic Objet Printer which in simple terms prints acryclic in 3D. I have done some work on starch printing which is incredible also but with the new printer I can now develop and make usable parts that are on an extremely small and precise scale. It gives me the opportunity to design objects on Rhino which have very precise articulating parts which I can use in my physical computing projects. An example of this is Xmas-Tree worms which is my first attempt at making a fully moving part and it works really well. The image below shows the motion in action. The arms are moveable though are completely 'joined' to the body, it kind of means you can create objects that would be very hard or impossible to make.