TIME:
5 weeks
TEAM:
Me and 1 other
TOOLS:
3D Printer
Rhino 3D
Grasshopper
Illustrator
Miro Whiteboard
PROBLEM:
Tasked with hacking a 3D printer to serve an alternate function.
INSPIRATION:
The contradiction of robot and art. Can a robot make art? Watercolor felt like a perfect medium to explore this because watercolor feels so delicate and gentle compared to the hard and rigid 3D printer.
PROCESS:
This function was up to me to decide, as students, we could take the project where we saw fit. My group partner and I started by creating a board in Miro to get ideas down and methodically weigh the pros and cons of two of our favorite ideas: painting machine and a stippling machine.
My partner handled the physical aspects of hacking the machine, they removed the extruding nozzle and the filament holder and replaced it with a paint brush. They were also responsible for getting all the necessary supplies. I was responsible for the back end digital aspects, the 3D modeling, Grasshopping scripting and rewriting the GCode that fed into the machine.
Near the home stretch of the project, my partner became very ill. I had to take over the project and command it on my own to reach the finish line.
My workspace in Rhino was laid out to have the general skeleton of the print space, with sections laid out on the right side for the paint well we attached to the print bed. These had multiple colors of watercolor paint which the brush would have to dip into in between each paint stroke.
My workspace in Rhino
My workspace in Grasshopper was very compartmentalized. Each little bundle you see is one task. Having the brush dip into clean water was one task, instructing the brush to dip into the color was another, completing a set number of brush strokes was another task, cleaning the brush off into dirty water, grabbing more color and so on.
All of these actions were then fed into the central GCode Generator, which compiled all of these individual tasks into a once, and translated the actions into a language the machine could understand. This GCode was then exported and uploaded onto an SD card, which was then plugged into the printer and the script was ran.
My workspace in Grasshopper
Closeup of a bundle of script telling the machine to pick up a color.
This is a close up of the GCode that was output at the end of the Grasshopper script. GCode is the language that 3D printers and other CNC machines use to orient themselves spatially over the three dimensions.
SOLUTION:
Below is the finished Watercolor Painting Machine in action!
Some artworks by the machine:
RESULTS:
At the end of the semester, our entire class presented our printing machines live in the studio. We had guest judges attend who currently work in the design field in the Salt Lake City, they were able to walk around and hear the lovely humming and buzzing orchestra of 12 3D printers going off at the same time. The judged our work and ranked our projects, our team won Best Engineering and Best Overall Execution!
What I loved about this project was the act of translation that had to be kept up throughout. Translating a digital thing into physical, running the script, troubleshooting, editing the script, running it, having it fail, editing the script, troubleshooting, etc, etc, etc.
This was really fun to me, I loved seeing how a digital thing would later manifest itself. I loved seeing the material qualities present themselves. This is the workflow I'd like to have in the future, once I have a career I'd like to work neither in the digital space, nor in the physical; but something in between the two. This is the novel and innovative space that feels exciting to me.
Self portrait by the machine
This was my favorite artwork by the machine by far, it felt so meta
FALL 2021
PROTOTYPING METHODS
PROFESSOR SUTTON
