Update

Since publishing (and well… also before) the nest-lamp I’ve been working on some other stuff. I improved the prototype of the lamp by making the support structure nicely attached to the shade (pictures soon). A brief sum-up of some of the other things I’ve been doing:

– More 3D texturing using the cnc mill. Continuing my research on textures I tried out different materials & finishings. Some try-outs with waste pieces of corian, an old plank I had laying around and some trash plywood from the fablab.

– Trying to achieve some generic shaping using Grasshopper. I like how using grasshopper opens up possibilities concerning 3D modelling. For some shapes it’s really hard to think of how I would do it in any other 3D modelling software (without the option for algoritmic modelling). It’s also about realizing I’m not designing one object but a system for creating many objects defined by my algorithm.

After making a jigsaw puzzle by hand I figured it would be cool to have the option of turning any drawing/poster/ … into a jigsaw puzzle. So this definition is for making jigsaw puzzles with any dimensions to be produced on digital machinery.

– I tried out the marker writing with the cnc mill like in one of my previous posts. Except this time I used a canvas as a support so there’s some flexibilty on the tip of the marker, which seemed to work.

– Then, next to some small scale dummys I made a full scale prototype of the shelve cabinet. It came out quit nice as I could use one grasshopper file to make the dummys as well as the full scale prototype by just entering different parameters. Also, my room looked surprisingly more tidy by putting stuff in the shelves instead of spreading it out on a small table.

– I had this block of oak which has been lying around at my place for 2 years. I brought it from erasmus and never found the time to do something with it. So I decided to go for it and try it out on the milling machine at Fablab Genk. It’s really nice to machine oak. The finishing on the pictures is straight of the machine, no sanding afterwards.

– I made a grasshopper definition for making cardboard boxes of different sizes. It’s only for one specific type of box but it’s good to have it for if I want to create a box with the dimensions I need. Otherwise I would have to either buy expensive software which gives me a lot of different types of boxes (while I only need one) or draw the curves every time I need a box with specific dimensions. I tested it at Cuthings, since they have a machine for cnc-cutting cardboard. Might still need some testing and improvements maybe.

– And last but not least, I’ve been designing & producing some stuff for c-mine. More on that coming soon…