Shelandy Ting: Serial Slice

The original idea is to make the serial slice of the whole piece of my 3D print design work "I meant it", to see how far the abstract expression of slicing can deliver different but interesting look of those 3D text sculpture.   However, because the huge amount of cut-out of the design, I have to compromise to do only one letter  among them.  I chose the "a" with the cut-out light channel of letter "e."  It would be very boring if I cut in the direction of Z or Y or Z axis.  So I decided to make it 45 degree to make a zigzag texture of its facets.

However, I did not realize the trouble I could encounter using this special cut angle, with the physical limitation of no more than and using .25"core and the maximal size of 3D model.  The available surface on each curve for placing the referenced core is too small.  I can hardly place them, not to mentioning that I have to put at least two cores inside each piece.  No matter how I move, there are always a piece that it will have a core for referring other piece crossing over its outline.  I spend a month to figure out how to make this work:
I have to find the exact core position first with the extruding height, then redo the slicing again with the appropriate core location and angle.  This is hard because I've rotate the plane of bird's eye view for 45 degree in two axis.  It is now difficult to move things which  have a same setting of displacements and angles.  Once I have the curves located in  the right angle and location, I make them become surfaces by using "planerCurve."  Then I use the intersection of the core and the planerCurve to generate the 'estimated' inner cut curves, by applying "curve from object" -> "intersection".

The reason I said 'estimated' curves is because it is not necessary the case: since the available top surface top for each block is so tiny, some core for registering other slice will be likely intersecting the contour.  As mater of fact, since the purpose of the cores is for referencing the orientation of a slice and lot of the edge of slice contour is composed of straight line segments, if we see a round edge cut through a straight line, we know it is the cutting residue of the core shape.  I make sure that each piece having at least two cores, yet keeping the number of cores to be minimal.  It took a long time to figure it out the best deployment of cores.  Once I got those contours, I group them and use the script to make the label, and manually clean it up because the slicing labeling script does not perform well in this case.

I make two keyshot rendering to simulate the martial I like to use.  I do think of use foam with sand splatting.  So the first one use I use marble texture to render it,

The second one use  red reflective glass with a background, to see how it looks alike to be a large scaled installation

Shelandy Ting and Christopher Chambers: Chess Piece

The theme of this group project is to make a piece in the chess board game.  We agreed on the theme of  implementing the rook.  Chris got some initial inspiration form the Minimum game which also uses low poly expression for visualizing its game objects. 

Based on the image of the tower that people have been familiar to the impression of rook, we decide to have some modern interpretation of those meanings behind the image of rook people often associate with, such as stability, zigzag shape of the battlement. 

We use Rhino to construct the solids and use Boolean difference to cut out the negative space we want, use command "arraypolar" to place them into four corners "and then manipulate the corners of the top by manually editing the control points.

After that, we use Pepakura to unfold the 3D models into 2D surfaces with gluing tab.  Most of tabs are sized 15mm, but few of surfaces are tiny so we adjust their tab heights into 10mm.

The default cutting of Pepakura will generate some strange results.  It takes quite some manual effort to maker it right, by adding some pre-defined cutting line to assist Pepakura to make the right decision.  After the cleaning up and the editing of the layout, we end up with two 24"x48" sheets to print.

I choose using White Marble to render the bird view in Keyshot, as shown below

and I use Reflective Red Glass to render the worm eye view 

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Adding the shot of the finished cardboard construction

Shelandy Ting: Lamp

I have been amused by Jim Sanborn's  "A,A" for some time, and like to make a similar light installation art to project the lovely Chinese calligraphy font onto the environment I have been living.

With this goal in mind, when designing my own lamp, I intent to reserve the wall on the top and some space on the side walls to put few Chinese characters.  Since the Chinese calligraphy fonts already have quite a complexity, I decide make the external contour of the lamp to be simple, yet with elegance in an asymmetric outlook inside a symmetric structure.  So it will show some modern fusion feeling.  Since the major impression of the rib of the lamp will be in a simplistic style, one way to add more fun on top of it without overkilling it by making the expression too heavy, is to add a light-weighted twist of 'texture' in the 3D structure.  The question is: How can we add a 'texture', which is mostly expressed in 2D pattern, on a 3D structure without occlude the shape of original structure?  I spent some time in searching the possible technology of using laser cut on wood crafting, and found a way called "living hinge" to make the hard surface bendable.  So I am using this lamp design to further exercise my skill of fusing 2D and 3D feeling in an installation art.  None of the living hinge pattern on internet is suitable for my demand of twist, so I create my own.  

I use Rhino to draw the contour of ridge,  and use the "arraypolar"command to place the ribs onto the desired locations.   To make the interesting asymmetric outlook, I use boolean difference to cut out the top of a big sphere from the button from a particular angle.   A primitive preview of the structure will look like this:

I wish to make the button skirt higher to reveal more sweep above the hemline.  However, I also like to make the ribs twisted for 90 degree in the real assembling process.  (That is the reason that the slots on the top did not align to the center of circle in this design preview.) In the early design phase I did a test on a hardboard stripe and it can hardly bent that much if shorter than 15cm.  I also have to limit the length of ribs length in order to not to have a huge lamp.  This physical constraint for using hardboard as the material is something  I have to compromised.   After getting the first cut, I realized a way to avoid this problem, I will make the change in the next revision.     

One thing we can see from this picture above is that the Rhino script of cutting the intersection slots may not work well in some cases.  Since I knew I am going to be bold to try some things  in the design beyond what we can reply on Rhino, so I did not bother to fix all 2D laser cut layout design all in the 3D view of Rhino.   I start with the 3D model in Rhino as much as possible, then clean up the problem in 2D view in Rhino which gives me more clear and precise control for laser cut.  After that, I alter the 2D layout again for those parts which the 2D shapes needed to be adjusted for constructing the 3D structure which can not simply constructed/ simulated  by Rhino.  One thing I am going to try is make two different twisting structures in the final result, but no one knows how exactly the material I am going to used will be twisted  with a particular setting of  material/ spacial configuration.  so the lesson learned here is

Make your design as detail as possible, then allowing trial and error to find the best combination. 

The interior shape of the circular disk is further limited to support only two goals:

• support the part of the bulb fixture, 
• make the light projection through the mask as much as it can be

The circular disk on top is for the calligraphy mask, the disk in the middle is designed in the way 
the hollow shape will let the light coming from the bulb underneath go through the mask as much as possible.  A transparent material might be better, but its not viable for now since lots of designers are competing one laser cutter.

This is the layout sheet for my first cut, which I put two designs on it.  The one without twist ribs, and another one without complete lamp construction but the major part of the twist ribs 

After the first assembling the result of  the first cut, the twist of live hinge does add a tasteful fun on top of the basic contour.   However, the effect of the light mask is not too obviously.   It will take a while to find the right bulb and redesign the focal length from the bulb to the mask.  So I temporarily drop the idea of having Chinese character light shadow project, and scale the Chinese character down as the decoration on top disk so I can make more slots to accommodate more living hinge twists to flourish the top of lamp.   I also make the slots on the disk rotate to certain degree, hoping the result of connecting the joins is better.  Again, this is a somewhat trial and error process because the degree of individual rotation is hard to calculate, the only way is to estimate and make a prototype to test if the estimation works or not.

Since the final spacial structure is way different than the 3D rendering can make.  I did not make a Keyshot rendering for it this time because it is will be a total misleading.  I will add a photo of the assembled lamp once I get the second cut, which is delayed because the assistant of fab delayed my first submission which has lots of  living hinge which taking too much time for them to cut.    Before that, this is what the close thing I can get to render the idea:

Because the fab could not give me all 16 living hinges I need, I teared down the living hinge and took the shot of the lamp.  I will add another picture once I got enough living hinge to finish the real composition

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Adding the shot of the construction with only few living hinges

 

Shelandy Ting: Project 2: Flashlight Sleeve

My original idea to design the flashlight sleeve is to mix iconic expression with textual expression.  However, under the constraint of techniques, budget and time, at end I revised my design to use only iconic expression without mixing the text.  Yet it still preserves the essential techniques I'd to experiment to see how much I can push to fit the 2D iconic expression to a 3D surface using FDM.  It is a long journey and I got the comment from Andrew Scott that I am "chewing an elephant" and I have to take it "bite by bite." So I'd like to document the details of process so newbies can also chew an elephant like me.  Here are some screen shots at various stages.

Naked Edge Check

 Material organization for Keyshot

I use glass texture to render top pedals, ceramic texture to render the rose on side and metal for the black body.  

During the 3D model construction with the asymmetric "rail-revolve".   It is difficult to have a thin layer of pedals on top yet the join to the body is well connected.  I did not know I can use Chamfer to relief the problem while I am working on the model,  so I compromise the thickness of top pedals to be not too thin because I worried about the supporting issue of the undercut contour.  This can be improved  in the next time. While turning on the flash light, the non-transparent white-ABS printed sleeve does glow on top part of the pedals, similar to the result I render here using the Keyshot.
 
For those who are not interested in the journey, just read the week 5 or 6 and jump to week 9 and 10.

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Week 5 :

Since I am not be able to use a beautiful Chinese calligraphic font as my design material in the 3D light tunnel perspective art the previous time. I have been thinking to fit the calligraphic pattern on the surface of flashlight, using the font from an artistic Sung Dynasty emperor in the collection in the National palace museum at Taiwan.

Translate the particular verse "舞蝶迷香徑" showing above into English would be something like "Dancing butterfly wonders in aromatic trace"   However, it will be boring just do one-to-one translation from the text to 3D surface.  I'd like to replace the character of "蝶 (butterfly)" in sothis me kind of flat butterfly icon, and replace the character "香 (aroma)" into a 3D rose, similar to what Robert Rauschenberg mixing flat and 3D objects in his Monogram.

However, my new expression of mixing styles will still keeps some mystery for audience like to ponder / associate what is the original text when they see the mixing textual and iconic expression.

Week 6:
I was lag behind the normal progress, due to some unexpected issue of the previous project.  It also let me realized that the resolution of current 3D FDM printing we can afford is far less than what I need to accomplish my ideal.  So I have to compromise my design idea.  So no more pure 3D butterfly/flower but 2.5D iconic expression based on text or iconic images.

I decide to catch up by something more advanced techniques, which involves using some kinds of fitting  curves on surface and so called "circle-packing" by making "screentone" and other techniques used in 2D-printing on 3D surface.  In this way, I can make abstract expression similar to the impressionist did in their strokes,

However, there is no clear vectorized scan of this font I want.  I use Gimp to convert the scanned bitmap into a black and white image file. Then trying to use Inkscape to make vectorized curve.  The resolution of previous bitmap scan I got is too low.  I did try redo it using "fuzzy selection" or "intelligent cut" from the new color scan from in Gimp to smooth the contour.  But none of them has a decent result. So I gave up the idea to mix the font from ancient manuscript now.  I  will focus making the surface fitting of 2D icon on 3D first, then attach the ideal way of using the Chinese font later.

Week 7: Ditch the text now, I just prepare the butterfly and rose images on the surface, then use Inkscape to convert it into vectorized file for using as the mask in Rhino.  I've been fought for one day and finally figure out the correct procedure to convert a bitmap to vector file for import into Rhino:  Path -> trace bitmap -> edge detection -> update ->ok
Some other setting will likely fail.  However, there will be double curves for tracing the edges.  It will need some clearing up to remove the false curves, by joining them, remove most of unwanted groups, and split them to remove bad curves. While doing this and study the online information, I realized that there is no simple way to do circle-packing in Rhino.  It most often need to install Grasshopper and figure out the way to connect the components.        

Week 8:
I try the Rhino script of circle packing by Steven Janssen.  It did not work for me because it does not do circle packing for filling a close curves.  So we likely have to install Gasshopper and other scripts/plug-ins on our own machine to make it work.  

 To install Gasshopper, download the latest, (currently is grasshopper_0.9.76.0.rhi), under windows system, double click the .rhi file, windows will call Rhino to install it. Once it finished under Windows system, launch the Rhino.  It will ask of the agreement of license.  Check the agreement, then the post-installation will finish.

To launch the Grasshopper, use the command line input of Rhino to type "grasshopper", download whatever addon for Grasshopper, then drag and drop it from the windows system to the main window of "Grasshopper", then it will install the drop-in addon.

The tough thing is that most of scripts does not give any proper documentation.  You have to enough understanding of how those algorithms works before using this script.  While I trying to read those papers, I did some calculation and found out that the working surface is too small for the shapes I like to do circle packing on 1.75mm FDM processing.  A 1.75mm distance is roughly equal to 3 ticks on the screen shown below, so most of tiny shape/curve can not be expressed well by circle packing.  If I increase the radius of circle, the fidelity on making the abstraction using circle packing to  is gone.  So I have to revise the design again.  

Week9
How can I push to make something different in 3D print, without using the advanced "generative art" technology?  I decide to think back making sculpture in the traditional way, such as the way people making the Pillar and windows for Chinese temple...

For making the butterfly and rose a contrasting expression, I use two styles in seal engraving: embossed seal indenting seal.  The rose will be made in extrusion like the embossed seal, and the butterfly will be made in carving like the indenting seal.  I then realized that I can still making the rose in 3D shape, by varying the heights of extrusion in making the pedals. And the searching the Youtube video on "Revolve" command gives me a new inspiration that I can use "RailRevolve" to make a cure revolving based on non- symmetric revolving pattern.  So I can actually make the contour of opening of the Flashlight looks like an edge of flower pedals from the bird-eye view.    I used the outer rim of rose as the rail pattern, make a profile curve of  pedal, then do RailRevolve based on the outer rim of rose pattern.  After I use "offsetSrf" on the RailRevolved Surface, I got a nice 3D pedal.  There is dilemma to find the balance between how can I make beautiful sharp pedal edges and not to interfere the hole for the flashlight, I spend a whole day to fine tune this.

Week 10
Fianlly, I use "createUVCrv" and  "FlowAlongSur" to layout the rose and butterfly pattern on the sleeve conic surface.  After cut the unnecessary parts.  There come my secrete garden scene.  Shapewave charge me $300 to realize this complex design, so I ask some other company to do it in a less precise process.  

I finally got this printed in couple weeks in more than $60 with an acceptable quality.


The actual result with a low resolution camera

Shelandy Ting: week10 : Waffle

I was inspired by the  ideal of open furniture design from the https://www.opendesk.cc.   I like to use laser cut plywood board to make bendable surface of complex curvatures for a beautiful love seat.  Even through I am not able to make the surface now, at least I can test my idea of designing contours by making supportive frame by waffle alike structure.  I won't say I was inspired by the shape of the "Banquete Chair with Pandas" (2006) made by Fernando + Humberto Campana .  However I did think of making a cute love seat which having a implicit shape suggesting of some kind of cute creature. 

I did not use the traditional 4-legs style for the seat.  There are two reasons for that:
1.  It looks cute to have a tail-alike 3rd leg, which implicitly make it look like a abstract creature with a tail.
2.  For those love seat, people tend to place the center of weight toward to the back.  This may be more stable than 4-legs chair.  
  
I simply use some spheres and ellipses to make the handles, feet and other parts, by using mesh boolean difference and merge mesh of parts together. The more difficult things is to to fine tune the angles in 3D space so that the whole thing is both functional and good looking.  I did try to use ChamferSrf to smooth the join between the 3rd leg and the base.  It did not look better than without the smoothing.  So I keep it the original simple join.  Sometimes, simple is better.  

This is the preview of the structure

The "BetterMassiveUnroll.rvb" script I used to unroll the fragment has lots of problem of the slots.  I almost redo all of them, and rescale some of the labels.  Finally, this is how the cut sheet looks alike.

This is how the massing form and grillage form extruded to proper material thickness look alike in the same image

I add  two renderings of keyshot.  Both are my intend of choice to make the chair in the full scale.  The First  one use Reflective Transparent and Red Glass, we can also use acyclic for the same effect.
 

 The second one use Mahogany Wood texture.

The actual result with a low resolution camera

 

Shelandy Ting: Slots

While I try to play with some slotted  bricks to make an interesting shape, I found out several concerns in having a good design of slotted bricks:

• do not make a long hole in a narrow area, it will bend and can not hold the weight
• use flexible material unless both the laser cutting  and the dimension of the raw board can be controlled in high precision
• better to have several slots in different places and angles, instead of having interesting shape but having less choice of slots in different places and angles

For the material, I choose the foam board.  I think it has enough balance between the overall rigidity and flexibility on the edge of slots.

To take care both artist and engineering concern, I choose not to make too fancy shape in designing the shape of the bricks, but put a shallow engraving on the surfaces to inspire the kids to use the bricks to create interesting shape.  How can I get a iconic expression to inspire people to make something come true?  I first thought of the "wishbone."  Later I realized maybe the fish bone will be a better metaphor to remind people that you can build the interesting creature using those bricks as the skeleton, just as fish bone to a fish.  For achieving  this goal, I make the curve of a whole fish bone, but also dissect it into two parts and spread them on the brick surface to remind people to assembly them in a appropriate way to make the fish body.

I use Gimp and Inksacpe to convert the bitmap of fish bone into vector file, then import to Rhino.
    

The final result with some creative mind of using them to compose some thing fun

      
   

Shelandy Ting: Week4 IMeantIt - conceptual study (Darft on Week2)

I meant it

Statement

I'd like to push the envelope of the expression of sculpture, by the mean of small-sized 3d-printing, which allows me to precisely manipulate the shapes so that some of its messages (expressed in texts or shapes) are clear but the meaning in the semantic level somewhat contradict to each other under this context of installation art, similar to what René Magritte's La trahison des images (The Treason of Images). However, I want to push the structure of ambiguity from a 2D structure to a 2D/3D mixing structure, a little bit like what Robert Rauschenberg did in his Monogram.

I like to push the 2D texts into 3D shapes, so that using different perspectives to look at the sculpture will give audience different messages, "yes" and "no", in the shadow when using two spot lights to illuminate it from different angels. I like to have perspective art similar the the “Dirty White Trash (with Gulls)”

The work may be composed of two hands and several English alphabets. The 3D alphabet models will be constructed by Maya (improved later by Rhino, as Andrew suggested) The 3D hand model will be prototyped by Maya at beginning, then redo again by obtaining it from the laser scanning of my own hands.




For the final result, the material is not too critical, as long as they are opaque enough (no PLA) so that the projecting light won't penetrate though the sculpture . Metal, Clay or even ABS should be fine. But I doubt that the traditional construction mean can duplicate my 3D structure in PLA/ABS printing.

Problem encountered and progress made

This is The texts above has been written since the second week, but I can only publish it today because that I could not even get the basic model work. The progress has been stuck for couple weeks on getting the boolean difference working on either Rhino or Maya by using on complicated meshes constructed in Maya. I have zero background in Rhino, but at least two week experience in Maya since week one. I build the basic blocks using Maya's text. However, even importing my .obj file from Maya to Rhino would not work when trying to do mesh difference. Finally, a experienced Maya user helped me go back to Maya to use a different way to make the boolean difference work on some troublesome meshes, by 11:30pm yesterday. I have not had time to finish the patching of broken meshes yet, but rendering of light did prove the concept. (See the "N" and partial "Y" in the shadows)

The shapewave charge me $150.  I chose a different source to print it.

The final  printed result with proper lighting to show shadowed text "yes"

The final  printed result with proper lighting to show shadowed text "No"