ROBOTIC ROD BENDING FOR STRUCTURALLY OPTIMISED SPACEFRAMES

tutoring: Maria Smigielska hosted by Digital Knowledge ENSA Paris-Malaquais at AA[n+1] galler, Paris February 2017   jury: Philippe Morel, Pierre Cutellic, Leslie Ware

This workshop was focused on workflows designed to produce structurally optimised irregular space frames with the use of robotic arm employed for the process of non standard rod bending. Students were introduced to parametric design tools, based on which they were experimenting with different methods of designing the spaceframe, focusing on the themes like variation, repetition, etc. Paralelly to that, with the use of FE analysis software and custom made digital tools- it was possible to not only to verify the structural performance of this experimentation, but also incorporate the structural analysis into the design process. By having the realtime visual representation of the force flow within a space frame answering specific loads and support conditions, multiple digital iterations and variants of spaceframes were produced . As a second step- students learned how to discretize the digital model in order to produce only 2 dimensional bent elements as structural members. Fabrication process was based on automated robotic bending of 4 mm steel rod and included overcoming material and fabrication constraints ( material elongation and springback, size limitation, etc..). Assembly process involved testing with different joinery methods: glues, tapes, cable zip connectors and explored different ways of assembling (sequential, clustering of cells, etc) within each group. photo documentation here