Clay FDM Experiment

 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 pitch density of the spiral. I also setup a Pipe component to visualize what the print would look like, but it was far too intense for my computer, so I left it disabled.

Clay printing:





    The benefit of generating the spiralized curve directly, is that there's no need to try and extract contours or spiral curve manually, so I'm able to bake any generated curve and then load the GCODE generator and link the curve directly. I generated two curves for testing on the clay printer, each requiring different adjustments for feedrate. For zeroing the Z axis, I found it was best to zero it at about 3mm above the print plate to account for any elephant foot. I was a bit worried that the one print might not workout with have such closely overlapping paths up the center of the spiral, but once I got the settings dialed in, the prints went smoothly.

    Overall, I'm really happy with how the prints came out, and I'm quite excited to experiment more in the future, both with the clay printer, and with Grasshopper. 

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