Digital Craft Blog

 Grasshopper:      At first, I played around for a bit, using sine functions to warp a straight curve with many divisions into a sine wave. After a bit, I got thinking about using multiple sine functions added together to create constructive and destructive interference the same way the radio and sound frequencies are constructed in order to manage noise from interference, or create overtones in sound. I ended up using a total of 3 sine functions for generating the base curve in 2D, and then used a 4th sine function to spiralize the base curve by passing the points into the cylinder point component, and the 4th sine function for the angle parameter, and then passing the result into a nurbs curve component. I setup various number sliders and dials to tweak and adjust the inputs for the sine functions, with variables for the functions phase, amplitude, and period. I also setup sliders for adjusting the total height of the spiral, the number of initial points, and the p...

 Prep for CAM:        Getting things prepped for CNC, I opted to do two pass on the foam with a tool change inbetween from the 1/4" end mill to the 1/8" end mill. The first pass I used the pocket clearing toolpath generation just to get most of the foam cut, as the 1/8" end mill was too short to clear the foam efficiently. I had accidentally set the origin of the stock to one of the bottom corners instead of the top, and so when I zeroed the CNC machine on the top of the foam stock, the machine attempted to cut the space above the foam. To fix this, instead of trying to rework the original file with a new origin, I simply zeroed the machines X and Y axes on the top corner of the stock, and then moved the tool head to an empty spot on the CNC bed and zeroed the Z axis against it. This worked perfectly.      For the tool change, I had marked previously a spot on the stock to be my origin for zeroing the tool, and so after the tool pass, I zeroed the...