8. Soft robotics¶
Welcome Back! This week has been truely special to me. as more exploration and research i do in this feild the more it fascinated me! Soft robotics is a feild where it is still work on in R&D deparments in architecture firms and in Nasa and technology labs to explore more potential in .
Talking about potential , Do you know what is the concept behind soft robotics ? it intersects Design + Biology + Technology . and well inspired from Bio-mimcry feild , making shapes and objects function and move as a mirror of how nature do ! that is why Biology here play strong role!
Research¶
Starting the week with inspiring fabricademy lecture + reviewing alumni documentation where helpfull to see the assigment expectation and how they think about it and even read about some of failliure expectation was truely helpful and encouraging .
Search deaper on the topic i wanted to see how much this field can work and the potential of it in multi diciplines and in architecture :
NASA¶
here you can review NASA Interns , they are doing a research and i found it... and I found it interesting how they experiment a way to adjust the amount of air in the chambers to expand and compress in a controlled way as a mimic of human muscles.
confused what is chamber ? it is alright stay tuned i will explain in next section , hint it is such a road designed inside object allow the air to move through.
EMObot-Architecture¶
More documentation I read the more potential i find and i was curious to read about soft robotics in architecture field and i found out how responsive elevation facade are changing behaviour and work as a responsive and adabtive designs inspired by biology too and even pavilions works same way. Intrested to know more? i will leave you with an intresting research from UCL architecture school EMObot
Process and workflow¶
I will start with expirmentation section in the lab for soft robotics then i will show my result and design based on what i learned and material behaviour observation.
The tools and machines will be used on this section are :
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Machines / Tools a.Laser cutter b.(Vinyl cutter) c.Heat Press d.3D Printer FDM
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Software Rhinoceros / Grasshopper / Cura
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Materials Vinyl sheets, silicone, Baking paper Scissors, cutters, pencils Acrylic sheets, PLA filament
Step 1 - Prepare¶
The work has started by understanding the fomula of the silicon as the most important is to use 1:1 , and this means using two cans of silicon A and B equal amounts to mix them togather for a whole one-minute.
And note that some times the amount of how many grams of A and B to use for each mold meight be diffrent from a brand to a brand and that is why reading the paper prescription for the product to use . any way i will put the package of the used silicon here.
Mix A + B in the same cup and stir for one minute. This step ensures the two components blend evenly before testing the soft robotics material.
Pouring the mixed of silicon on the middle of the mold as it will be spread slowly around the edges . As well slowly pour to avoid bubbles on silicon 'keeping your hand quite higher is an advantage to slow down silicon pour and bubbles
same method can be poured on any mold shape and here i added a light amount of pigment to give this color of pink and in the step 2 you will see also another shaped of mold i explored . the ideal time is to leave the silicon in the mold 4-hours
A note here that i used 2 molds - one with chambers and the second without as these both will be sticked on the top of eachother and the chamber will be in the middle .
Step2¶
Using Hand pump to push air in the chambers to help it resize and adjust based on .
Failed expirment¶
well this trial has failled with hand pumb and while work on it in the depth with instructor the thing was either the hand pumb small and the silicon is heavey layers or the chambers has been closed while glowing them . Here i used the electrical and manual pumb for this silicon Chambers mold + Top layer and it was not inflated at all!!
chambers could be glue with silicon by mistake so the air is blocked from moving inside as chamber will be closed . it is good that happened to be careful with glue next design and keep your glue always on the edges!
References & Inspiration¶
Octopus has inspiring body and a movement way and as scientist discovered that octobus has a brain in center bus each leg has it is indivisual brain and not connected .that is made me interesting to read more and start test it and will dive you deeper to the implementation
Mold Design¶
First i upload 2d outline skech for octobus leg then i traced using polyline command on rhino.
After that i delected the photo and used only the traced lines and circles and adjust it is scale to fit the 3d printer because it was quite big .
Then wanted to try on grasshopper to have more flexipility of a aparametric model to adjust and explore avter that i took surface command to convert line - surface then bake commandto upload on rhino.
Designed Two molds, one with the chambers for the air to flow, aiming to make a sort of a gripper like the tentacle.
Skechfab 3D Model¶
View this 3D model on Sketchfab
3D print-mold¶
Ultimaker 3D Printer - Mold Printing
Octopus Workflow¶
This photo shows the output of 3d printed as a 3d mold with a setup to start silicon process and pour it down on the mold + there is a use for pigment ,scale and silicon 1:1 . The process following here is same as above !!
Results¶
Videos with Hand-Pump¶
Hand Pump for Silicon in the lab - first expirment
One of things here is the chambers are quiet high and it helps to increase the amount of air inside which means more volume !!
You can see also that the chambers size are diffrent and that mean it will be inflated less if it is small.
Hand Pump for Silicon in the lab - second experiment for bubbles potential
Challenges during Octopus workflow¶
After first 3d print i faced some issue with the model : it was quiet thin , incomplete/ broken a few peices in wall. but the advantage was that i learned from this mold it is better to decrease the numbers of circles in chamber and remove the tiny oney near the tail is the air hard to rach it and i think it was good because it helped saving the air on the right places for silicon inflatable.
Heat-Press vinyl¶
Hand pump¶
The Vinyl design is successful and as can see that by inflating the design, the movement is achieved because of the air flowing into the baking paper chamber. you can see the movement in the video below!