We never finish finding the wonders that we can do with the use of industrial robots and the right software system.
One of the great capacities that human beings have is to create and with technological progress they have been able to create everything from exhibition works to conventional elements such as furniture.
An example of this is the Voxel Chair, a 3D printing software research and development project by a team from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. The Bartlett Design Computing Laboratory (DCL), a part of University College London, created the software to open up new possibilities for 3D printing.
This project was based on the development of 3D printing software where a continuous line of plastic forms this interlocking chair built by a KUKA robotic arm.
The software has been tested on this complex 3D printed chair called Voxel Chair v1.0 and it is made by a robot that extrudes molten plastic into the air and quickly solidifies when cooled.
Through trial software, the lab team designed and manufactured the Voxel Chair v10, which is made of non-toxic blue biodegradable transparent PLA plastic. The prototype was inspired by the Panton chair from Verner Panton and demonstrated the ability of technology to produce fine geometric patterns. The line that forms the saddle is 2.36 kilometers long.
The new software has many functional advantages. It supports the creation of more complex models, and creating lighter, more adaptable and efficient forms, avoiding using more materials than necessary.
It is suitable for the design of artificial material with large scale properties, which have an internal structure designed for a certain arrangement, such as the all-plastic door latch from the Hasso Plattner Institute.
The chair itself is inspired by the famous S-shaped Panton chair created by Danish designer Verner Panton. It’s called a Voxel chair, named after the so-called “voxels”, and it works like a pixel in three-dimensional space.
This process is very economical and fast, allowing large-scale objects to be manufactured, the efficiency of printing in the air saves a lot of time in the printing process. generating faster and using less material.
The software won the 2016 Autodesk ACADIA Emerging Research Award for Best Paper and was presented at the ACADIA 2017 conference.
With a single plastic strand and advanced software, it was possible to design an original chair built by an industrial robotic