The Render

Usually we use modeling software to create and mimic something that we are familiar with in daily life, for example I see countless interaction lab kids printing their mushrooms or gears or magic wands, but few of us actually see it the other way around, which is to create something that is actual and physical, that mimics what we see in the digital world. So I made this 3-piece digital fabrication wall art that mimics the blank rendering in 3d-modeling softwares, and blurs the gap between the digital and the reality and makes you ponder the question of what seems real and what doesn't.

Originally I was going for something that conveys well the capabilities of the digital fab techniques that we have learned (i.e.: laser cutting, 3d modeling and printing, cnc etc.), and I decided to make them under the idea: organic, I thought it would demonstrate the strength and difference of those techniques very well. However, inspired by our professor when we were just casually talking about how I want this project colored, I decided to think about the idea further, and came up with what I have right now.

This is a three-part wall art that uses one of the three techniques mentioned above. The left part is made out of ply wood and acrylic boards (although the spray-painting made them all looked the same in the end) using laser cutting, the middle board is created with CNC machine using displacement mapping, and the right part is a voronoi shape made by 3d printing.

I will put the most important sketch and the pinterest mood board here also.

Step 1: Here's How I'm Gonna Structure This Blog:

Since I have the piece relatively separate in the making process, I will talk about them in the order of: sketching as a whole, piece 1 through 3 in their modeling process, and them in their fabrication process.

Also I will put the only file you need to use if you want to make it yourself at the end of each FABRICATION steps. Any other files I will be attaching them to the back of the modeling steps. If you want to look at the fabrication process as a whole, I will have an .stl file where I did basically everything in the beginning of this post (recommend opening with rhino).

So, here's the basic outline I created in rhino.

Step 2: Sketching and Ideation

So after I came up with the early version of the wall art idea I began thinking about the possibilities of not necessarily making it flat, i.e. making it feel more 3d-y and possibility making a 3-part sculpture out of it (something like the 2nd picture in p1). As p4 shows this thought went on quite long and then was abandoned because I couldn't figure out how to make the laser-cut piece work in 3d. Also it would have taken ages to make the four-walled texture mapping piece. So that Idea was quickly abandoned as I went back to my wall art idea.

Step 3: Modeling Process 1: the Laser-cut Piece

So for the laser-cut piece, I traced the outline layer by layer inwards, and made four "inner" pieces that I will extrude to a 5 mm thickness and put on top of the base piece (which was also 5 mm thick and had no holes), with a 1 cm spacer with in each one of them.

P2 and 3 are pics when I was putting them in different layers to give them different colors, after which I learned how to assign the colors in the rendered view and did that (p4), instantly looked better.

Step 4: Modeling Process 2: the 3D Voronoi Piece

For piece two I firstly extruded the outline to a 5cm thickness, and then applied the grasshopper Voronoi command set to it. I added several sliders and adjusted some of the parameters, but I didn't really like how it looked. Then I tried only baking the outline of the cells without the pipe on grasshopper, but applying the subD pipe command on rhino myself. This resulted in significantly better pipes, but there were some jagged and weird spikes which was due to some of the curves of the cells having too many control points (and also because of double lines generated by grasshopper), so I cleaned them up and applied the subD pipe again, and it looked much better.

Here is the rhino and grasshopper files for making the voronoi shape, you should open the rhino file first and then open the grasshopper file inside it and assign the Brep to the shape in the rhino.

Step 5: Modeling Process 3: the CNC Texture Mapping Piece

This one is the hardest by far.

So for the texture I just downloaded tons of color transition pictures online but they all ended up being a bit too messy for texture mapping to look any good. So I made my own image in PS and mapped it onto rhino. I have all the parameters in P3.

Then I did some magic command (which I will ask Andy for later) that turns the mapped shape into a mesh. Then I was able to extrude the mesh, and send it to Meshmixer.

In there I noticed the side walls are all flipped, but proceeded nevertheless. I fixed some errors that the model apparently had according to the inspector, and then I did a plane cut and decided to not smooth out the piece to preserve the mesh shapes.

Here is the group of files I created in the process of making the whole thing, including rhino model, meshmixer files and what not.

Step 6: Fabrication Process 1: the Laser-cut Piece

This one is relatively straight forward.

So I laser-cut them out (5 mm) (as well as the spacers using acrylic), and spray printed them all white, sanded them relatively smooth and sprayed again (for which I used up every single drop of the white paint I could find a.k.a. 2 and a half cans sorry lol).

I glued two little pieces of spacers together to form a thicker one (using acrylic glue and this random right-angle jig I made a year ago).

Then using the AB part glue (which I'm sure is not its real name but y'all understand me), I glued the layers together best as I could, while making a very fast right-angle jig in the process (before the glue cures because this thing cures FAST).

Also there's a specific reason that I use clear acrylic for the spacers. I want the piece to look like it was in the 3D software, which obviously has no gravity, so the pieces should "float", so in the real life the spacers should be transparent. That's why I chose acrylic.

Then I went ahead and tried to paint the sides of the board white using some white acrylic paint, but in the process I also painted some of the acrylic spacers white accidentally, which kinda defeated the point of them a little bit...... So this is definitely something I should consider changing If I were to remake this project...

Step 7: Fabrication Process 2: the 3D Voronoi Piece

This is somewhat straightforward too.

I put the model in the printer, deleted all the support structure (because apparently there are only going to be minor "spaghetti-ing" on those hanging bridges). So I went ahead and printed it, which took me one whole day (I'm using ultimaker and generic PLA BTW). After that I took a soldering iron and just slightly melted the spaghetti and smoothed them out a bit before I sanded them using the dremel (which was kinda dangerous by the way because one piece of melting hot debris somehow managed to fly into the gap between the goggles and my forehead INTO MY EYE -- which obviously sucked).

Anyway, once I finished I sanded it using a 400 sand block, and went ahead to spray print it.

I put multiple layers of primer on the piece and got impatient and didn't wait long enough for the layer to dry (and because I put too much on that layer), so when I took it out and tried to sand it it didn't go too well -- the not dry parts stayed pretty much the same while the dried parts got sanded off, so in the end the priming and sanding didn't do much in terms of smoothing the piece out, also because the primer was totally gray, the white paint that I applied later didn't look too well. At this point I would have preferred it without any spray print.

Here is the link to download the .stl file for you to print on your own. (sorry the file is too big I couldn't bring it on the blog so I have put it on Google Drive)

Step 8: Fabrication Process 3: the CNC Texture Mapping Piece

The CNC piece was always the trouble kid.

What I did was gluing some chemical wood (because it finishes and cuts well on machine), but also some plywood just for safety measures. I cut them to shape on a table saw and band saw, then put the chemical wood one in the CNC machine. (Why does it sound so much simpler when I write it out......) It did it's thing for about 22 hours and I was left with some pretty nice-looking hills and valleys.

After that I scooped it out and had no idea how to take off the tape residuals in the back of the thing, I tried alcohol and heating and whatever but it did not work. Then I had a totally BIG brain idea of just sticking the sheet of plywood (that I cut out just to trace the shape onto the two blocks) to the back of the piece so that 1 I don't have to deal with the glue problem and 2 the back was absolutely smooth and I didn't even have to sand it anymore. Also I had some rather innovative clamping method in the end...... (credit: Marcela's heat blanket)

You can find the fabrication file attached above.

Step 9: More Post-processing and Final Assembly

For the last bits of post-processing, I did a bit more spray painting to both the CNC and the voronoi pieces just to make them more evenly colored (I tried my best at least before the paint ran out), and I tried to sand off the edges left on the laser-cut piece (although that didn't work too well either because I assume the paint didn't dry enough or it stays gooey for quite a long time).

And finally I arranged them on a sheet of wood painted white, and the project is done.

Add 10.22: Last minute I added three axis just as a 3d modeling software would have onto the corner of the board.

Step 10: Discussion and Possible Revision

All in all, I am quite happy with how this project has turned out, it is about 85-90% of my ideal situation, the only few things that I feel like missing are:

1) Smoothing out the voronoi piece in some way. the primer did not sand well for me somehow, probably because of the complex shape or my poor spray-painting skills or because I got impatient and did not let the paint dry enough to be sanded. In any case, refining and smoothing out the surface a bit more would be ideal.

2) The consistency of the color. The three pieces are all made using different materials and treatments, thus the colors all look just a tad bit different after spray-painting. The CNC piece was showing a bit pink especially under strong light (or light with a specific color), and the voronoi piece was a bit gray, maybe they just need another round of spray-painting which I will do in a few days once my new paint is here.

3) Stick it onto a wall question mark? I haven't really thought about how I am going to mount the project onto a wall since it was intended to be a wall art. I know I should hang the back board onto the wall with some nails but how to fix the three piece on the board is still a question. I would actually prefer it if I could still take them off once mounted. Or i could go the other route and not mount them at all and present them in free spaces as if the reality has become a 3d render (provided the floor is going to be white of course) (or normal floor transitioning into white) (omg that's actually kinda cool I wonder if I could actually do that emmm).

4) The directional arrows! gotta have those!