MAT 238: Clay Printing

In this project, we were tasked with creating gcode that was suitable for clay printing

In order to create another one of our designs, we first explored different types of generative formulas. After some time, we decided to use the Fibonacci sequence to make a generative structure. After creating a simple fibonacci function in python that outputs the fibonacci value at an index, we created a function that creates the next point in the curve by mapping each previous point value to the next one using the fibonacci value at the current index. The fibonacci value was added either up, down, right, or left from the previous point to create a spiral like structure. Once this curve was created, we rebuilt the curve to contain many more points, and created gcode generation script that generated a height amount of layers that went though each point on the curve

Once this curve was generated, we experimented with creating a progressively increasing height of the curve. The resulting curve looked very interesting, so we decided to experiment with lofting it down to the base. Unfortunately, when generating the gcode, the curve would not have been continuous because of the changes in heights. We tried experimenting with bringing the nozzle to the end every iteration and stopping at the next height change on the way to the center, but this also produced very buggy gcode since the height would not increase when the nozzle was reversed.

Since fluctuating the height was unsuccessful, we decided to incorporate a symmetric aspect by reflecting the fibonacci curve across both the x and y axis. This creates a very interesting, fulfilling , violin-like design that would be able to produced very clean gcode if the height was kept constant for each layer. Once we decided upon the right height and number of Fibonacci numbers (width), it took us two total prints to produce a successful outcome.