Projects in progress at HONFablab Yogyakarta

Here is an update on some of the projects we are working on at HONFablab Yogyakarta:

CNC Marker drawing:

We tested marker drawing on the ShopBot with great success. This can become an interesting way of customizing CNC furniture. It also a good way to add something more exciting to the regular CNC flat-pack designs.

The ants are from an automatic ant graphic generating system I am working on in Grasshopper. The original ant and ant graphic system was designed by Daniel Rossi. More ant collaboration with Daniel is coming soon.

Parametric CNC construction and “dogbone” system.

To test the ant generating on a piece of furniture, and since we need more to sit on the lab, I made a Grasshopper definition that creates a stool or bench to any size. I also developed an approach to creating automatic “dogbones”, so the parametric inputs also include milling bit diameter and material thickness.

The ants crawl up onto the seat in random Y shaped branches and then form any custom graphics on the top, in this case the HONF logo. Tommy went ahead and pimped one test stool right away by adding a storm trooper in the mid section.

Physical interface for manipulating parametric designs

The parametric stool was also made to test the new reacTIVision component in Firefly for Grasshopper. A webcam reads simple black and white “markers”, and the X,Y and rotation parameters becomes input in your Grasshopper definition. This has huge potential for making easy to use interfaces for manipulating parametric designs in grasshopper. Someone without any computer design knowledge can walk into a Fab Lab and create a design by shuffling coasters around on a table. A CNC milled reacTIVision table is in the making.

Full 3D CNC milling

We got the 3D post processor up and running and ran a few tests. We also did a very successful attempt at a flip part setup as well. We created a technique of first running a 2D Drill job with 4 holes at equal distance from the centre of the 3D model. When we flipped the model, we only had to screw the wood into the same 4 holes in the sacrificial layer to align the part.

Large organic surface example

There are many CNC chair designs, but few of them are actually comfortable to sit in. I thought this challenge would be a good chance to make an example of how to create large organic surfaces on the ShopBot. The layer chair is completely parametric in Grasshopper, the input is two profile curves and the material thickness. One curve for the mid section and one for the edge. It is also an experiment in 2.5D milling by having more resolution on the seat of the chair, and a single cut on the backside. A 1:1 prototype is on its way.

Work station for electronics and moulding and casting

I have been sketching a bit on how to make the biggest possible desk+shelf combination from a single sheet of plywood. This solution has only open path cut lines making multiple part edges per cut. It was quite a pain to keep track of milling bit diameter over the entire design.

Shelters for for refugees of the Mount Merapi vulcano eruption

HONF is starting up a project to create shelters for the many thousands of inhabitants displaced by the eruption last year. Among the goals are to use local wood sources and easy to apply DIY processes. Research is ongoing.

Arduino based bike installation

We are trying to use a magnetic reed switch and an Arduino to create input and output for a bike art installation. The big question is where to get a magnetic reed switch in Yogyakarta?