W3 - Lamp Shell

This is a report of failure...

The idea is to create a lamp shell similar to the cerebral cortex surface.

The generative system was made in Grasshopper with Kangaroo, to simulate physics like tension, anchor force, inflation, etc on the mesh surface.

The system can produce various forms in different depth, smoothness and scale of the mesh surface. However, I understand the more radical the form becomes, the more overhang issues will arise, so I optimized the parameter to where the sphere has a nice density and variation in height but also keeps less depth.

The overhang issue still persists since the cortex surface will go beyond the layer below without any support, so I added a graduate change based on height to eliminate overhang on lower layers but keeps the depth variant on higher layers. I also put it into a sculpturing tool to eliminate dramatic changes in the horizontal direction through manual sculpturing process.

The last step is to flatten the bottom layer of the sphere to reduce the most dramatic horizontal change as well as attach a lamp socket on the bottom.

However, the first few layers failed due to the overhang issue. Although I have thought about this from the beginning, since I did not include this validation check in the generative system, I had to go through a deconstructive process to adjust the model, and the result turns out don't work. Now I have limited approaches to fix it after the deconstruction, except a manual process or writing a validation script.

Another thought is this is related to the breaking-in-period, like getting a new shoe or a new jacket, you need to wear them in a painful way until they are broken in. I got too used to my old printer on which I usually print with support and spent a lot of time tunning into a best mode with appropriate slicer settings. If I have time to test print and play with the setting to figure out a best setting, I should be able to implement the limitation of the machine into the design before actually making it.