MAT 238 3D Printed Object With GCode

For this week's assignment, I created 3D printed objects with GCode generated in Grasshopper.

I used the code provided by the professor to generate the GCode of a star and printed the object. Then I looked into the Turtle Art GCode and wrote a recursive function to generate the GCode of a tree, inspired by this website. The results are shown in the images, as well as the code that generates the tree. I encountered some issues while printing the tree. I set the layers to be 15. However, there seemed to be some filament extruding issues and my final product is very thin. Also, the tree is very attached to the bed that there's no way to get if off without destroying part of it. I am currently looking into a way to generate a raft or berm in Grasshopper and try to print the tree on top of it. I also wonder if adding more layers to the print may help.

I changed the filament and modify the design to make the tree thicker by adding more layers. The result looks good.

I used the code provided by the professor to generate a GCode and printed out a textile to make sure the GCode generated by the Grasshopper will yield an object. The result is shown in the image. I noticed several things about the first product. The base layer is very thin. I almost destroyed the object when I took if off from the bed. Also, the object is very small. The interleaving structure looks very clear and the weave is clean.

In this part, I modified serval parameters to custom the textile. I increased the number of pillars as well as the interval between pillars to create a larger weave. I also varied amount of material of a hair per 1mm, trying to recreate the effect of under extrusion and and over extrusion. The printed products are shown in the images. When the amount of material of hair per 1mm is small (0.02), I notice there's defect in the weave as it does not look smooth anymore.