Cutting has begun

We have 75 or so blobs at the Andreas’ shop and have begun the first rounds of cutting, first 34 bricks. We’ve had a few hang ups but nothing major. Machineous is now filled with blobs. The space is packed with boxes, each with a dozen or so blobs peeking out and more laying around on the floor waiting for its turn on the robot. There isn’t much downtime, but we managed to get a few polaroids.

 

 

Guest blogger: Ben Buckalew

Photos: Ben Buckalew + ChiaHwa Lu

 

 

Which shade of Pink is your blob?

Here’s the color scheme that is used for the blobwall pavilion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Greg Lynn Form

 

While the bricks were on the road…

File prep has been taking a bit more time than we planned since all 700 something files had to be renamed. Anyhow, one thing I’ve been wanting to post up following our 23′ uHaul story…

 

While Oliver and I were delivering the bricks from C-Pak this past friday, there were a few folks from assembly team, Michelle Paul, Nick Paradowski and Jordan Su, at Machineous with Jeff and Andreas getting familiar with putting our blob bricks together. Looks like these guys are going to be teaching other folks in the assembly team how to build blobs soon! 

Tools are fairly simple and low-tec:

Soldering Iron w/ the flat tip, brush, blob bricks with path cut, and 2-3 people! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*PS: Big THANKS to you all who’ve been droppin by our blog + posting up the link on your site!!! Much love from sci-Arc! 

 

Photos: Jeongsun Oh

LA to San Bernardino and back again.

Last Friday, May 2nd 2008, Jeongsun and Oliver (me) took the dive.  After Chiahwa booked a 23′ U-HAUL truck, we were well on our way to C-PAK, in San Bernardino, to pick up the roto-molded blob brick pieces.  It took some time to adjust from driving a generic 4-door sedan to a 23′ long truck.  For once, WIDE TURNS actually meant something.  And staying in the slow lane and watching dozens of cars pass up took some getting used to as well. 

Driving to C-PAK took roughly 90 minutes.  Arriving just on time, 2:30pm, we were excited to see where these bricks were born out of: giant heated machines that heat, rotate, and cool each brick.  It was an amazing site to see.  The pickup consisted of seven boxfuls.

After picking up it was time for the drive back!  Driving a 23′ truck during the peak hours of downtown LA traffic takes a lot of patience and a strong reliance on those rear-view side windows, plus some instinct.  Eventually, we made it to Machineous, met up with Andreas and Jeff, and unloaded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Machineous is now seven boxes of bricks happier as the path programming team begins this Monday, May 5th, 2008, with the first 20 bricks ready for Mr. Robotic Arm to cut on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008.

*FUN Fact from C-PAK: Workers from C-PAK didn’t know what our blob bricks were so first they called the blue ones “MICKY” and now the pink ones “MINNIE“ 

 

Guest blogger: Oliver Liao

Photo: Jeongsun Oh

 

Robotic arm gist

So, here’s a general rundown on how the robotic arm works (the specifics will come later so stay tuned):

1. It involves using an engineering software called WorkSpace.

2. IGES files exported previously from Rhino done by the file prep team are imported into WorkSpace.

3. Each cut must be programmed so that the bit of the robotic arm cuts the surface of the blob brick at its perpendicular. Cuts are programmed to make these cuts from left to right, always clockwise, depending on the brick. Every brick’s cut path is unique.

4. Entrance and enter points for each cut are considered.

*RANDOM FACTOID: One thing to keep in mind is that this robotic arm can hit a baseball FAST like a professional baseball player. So, speed settings must be reduced or this thing will seriously FLY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Greg Lynn Form

Fun Fact behind our blob brick:

When we visited Machineous a couple of days ago, the brick below was sitting at Andreas’ office.

It is the initial brick mold that Greg created, which was covered with all kinds of codes and signs that locate certain points. What is this made out of? Low density polyethylene which is recyclable! It is the same material used in shampoo bottles that we see in everyday life. Because the polyethylene shrinks a bit, no brick is identical!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos: Jeongsun Oh

more SneakPeek?

 

Images: Greg Lynn Form

 

MACHINEOUS!!!!

It was finally the time for us to meet Mr. Robotic Arm.

The path programming team went to Machineous today after their work hours.  Andreas gave us a tour of the shop, and showed us around how the robotic arm works, then we moved onto a very thorough tutorial on path programing for the 6-axis robotic arm. Big thanks to Andreas!

For more photos? Check out our Flickr site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Jeongsun Oh

 

 

HAPPY MayDay!

So it is 3:30 in the morning. Thought that we’d hollar from the friendly PC-lab!

Currently, we’re blasting Madonna’s Hung Up!!!!

Splitting surfaces take way more time than we expected, and some of us, Oliver, me: jeongsun, and a few folks from the path programing team, have to head to Machineous later today at 5pm for a tutorial for path cutting and programming. Trying to get as much as done + the night is young!!!!!

Meeting w/ Jeff!

So today there was a meeting w/ Jeff, from the shop @ sci-Arc + partner of Machineous, to go over the next phase of file prep. (Supposed to be w/ Andreas yesterday, but he couldn’t make it).

Now that 4 of us, Oliver Liao, Jeongsun Oh, ChiaHwa Lu, and Mira Lee, are done with exporting all the bricks into Rhino, time to move on to the next job.

In order to get all the bricks to fit into one another, intersecting surfaces need to get trimmed out, and again be saved as an individual brick file for the cutting job with the ROBOT.

 

The following are the steps that Jeff gave us:

1. Import template into Rhino model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Clean out all the intersecting surfaces on each brick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Take an individual brick and place it on the template.

4. 3D orient the brick; make fat side up.

* Each brick is composed of two surfaces: Fat side + Thin side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Rotate fat using 3d rotation ( 0 about x axis at 180 deg.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Separate a fat and thin layer.

7. Every brick has a folder with fat. Iges and thin.iges in it.

8. Repeat steps 2-7 until the last brick.

 

Images: Oliver Liao

Photo: Greg Lynn Form