Robotic Sketching: A Study on Robotic 3D Printing with Clay
Open Access
- Author:
- Farrokhsiar, Paniz
- Graduate Program:
- Architecture
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- May 15, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Benay Gursoy Toykoc, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jose M Pinto Duarte, Committee Member
Felecia Ann Davis, Committee Member
Thomas Arthur Lauerman, Committee Member
Ardavan Bidgoli, Special Signatory
Mehrdad Hadighi, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- digital fabrication
Robotic fabricationsketching
additive manufacturing
3D printing with clay.
Digital Fabrication
Robotic Fabrication
Sketching
Clay 3Dprinting
Additive Manufacturing
Making Grammar - Abstract:
- Sketching is one of the most basic but influential steps in the early architectural design process. Architects use sketches not only to represent their ideas but also to generate new ones. The vague and fuzzy nature of sketches and the uncertainties of the sketching process give architects opportunities to see unexpected elements in their own design process, which in return help them to generate new ideas (Lawson, 2006). Although, conventionally, sketching mostly refers to two-dimensional drawings generated using hand-drawing tools, or exploratory physical models made by hand, in this research author aims to extend the definition of sketching to also include the digital fabrication process, more specifically robotic fabrication. The author argues for a need for a computational design framework in which digital fabrication tools are not only used to materialize pre-existing forms in the computer but rather are used as design generators and sketching tools to explore new design ideas. The author argues that certain material behaviors are unpredictable through digital models only. There are instances where digital fabrication tools shape the materials in unexpected ways or even the material behavior itself proposes a complex geometry that resulted from a simple fabrication process. This thesis focuses on such instances and presents the first steps of a case study on robotic 3D printing with clay where robotic fabrication and clay behaviors inform a feedback loop defined as the design process. Robotic fabrication is relatively new in the architectural field. Industrial robots giving architects more freedom in the design and fabrication process by applying real-time control over the robot’s settings that help architects to explore more design features while fabricating. This project presents the simultaneous bottom-up and top-down design explorations as part of the case study. The bottom-up process studies the sketching process with robot and clay through systematically changing fabrication and material parameters (i.e. speed and path of the movement, sizes of extruder nozzles, types of clay) creating various physical models out of the same digital model. In this series of experiments, many different features were discovered and explored such as looping and bridging behavior of the material also dragging and deformations of the outcome resulted from tool movement settings. The top-down process, on the other hand, focuses on the design of simple modules which in the future could be used to create a structural system exploring unit geometry and connection details. There are limitations and opportunities defined by the previous stage, on how far a design could go due to material tolerance also generating different simple toolpaths to create complex effects on each module without taking so much time and effort to digitally model it. On the next step, a shape grammar developed for the results of the experiments. The grammar presented for this work is analytical making grammar. These grammars could hold uncertainties and ambiguity as the shape grammar is based on the designer’s interpretation of what they see or in general what they feel about the result of each step of applying rules. There could be many possible outcomes by using a simple set of rules but the way the designer makes use of these rules in each step and decides to interpret which emerging shape or in this case behavior in which way shapes the design process and the outcome. It is a grammar that allows the designer to speak the language of design, but any sentence made by this grammar is unique for the accent of the designer and how they impress their ideas in this language. The resulted product depends on the method of sensing that the designer is using and how to interpret what they sensed. The idea of sketching in the context of this thesis is based on ambiguity, interpretations, and decision making which are all elements of computation with shape grammars.