digital futures » manufacturing

Lecture: FABRICATION 1

RSarrach — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:01:38 +0000

On Thursday, October 8^that 6pm, the first in a series of lectures by School of Architecture faculty will take place in the Higgins Hall Auditorium. The lectures will be focusing on specific projects that demonstrate new means of digital fabrication and material experimentation. This first lecture will be given by: Philip Anzalone, Stepahnie Bayard, Mark Parsons

Immediately following the lecture a reception celebrating the opening of the B. Arch Degree Project exhibition will take place in the Higgins Hall lobby.

OPENING: Pike Loop, a Robot-Built Installation in NYC

KSteinfeld — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:42:04 +0000

In September 2009, Storefront for Art and Architecture will inaugurate an exhibition of the work of Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich and, in conjunction with NYC Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program, Storefront will present the first architecture project to be digitally fabricated on site, at 1:1 scale, in the US.

Developed through their research at ETH Zürich Faculty of Architecture, Gramazio & Kohler’s work explores highly complex architectural artifacts, built by industrial robots typically used to assemble automobiles and perform other high-precision tasks. The accuracy, strength and speed of these robots allow them to fabricate architectural forms of unprecedented complexity and intricacy.

Gramazio & Kohler’s work represents the cutting edge of innovation in the field of digital fabrication in architecture. For many years architects have relied on digital manufacturing processes such as CNC milling or 3D printing as a tool for formal research at model-scale. For the first time, Gramazio & Kohler’s work explores the potential of mobile digital fabrication techniques that can fabricate at 1:1 scale on site.

RoboFold + formative technologies

RSarrach — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:08:09 +0000

This is an image of a formative technology coming out of RoboFold. It is a new formative computer aided manufacturing technology currently under development and could be promising considering that when a human hand enters into the production process it = $$$$$.

RoboFold is currently developing manufacturing processes utilizing industrial robots to directly create sheet metal forms. The system requires no tooling thus enabling the creation of new forms unavailable with current methods.

Please follow below for more info and videos–>>

The patent pending technology utilizes standard industrial robots to directly manipulate sheet material into complex surfaces by folding along curved lines. The RoboFold system will be controlled by a simple software plug-in to enable design, engineering and production planning in a familiar CAD environment.

text and images via RoboFold