foam printer
The briefing was to design chairs for a café. Since there are already plenty of great designs, we decided to not develop chair design #183192, but rather a way to replicate the designs that already exist with a new, experimental aesthetic.
![printer](/_next/image?url=%2F1406-foam-printer%2Ffoam-printer-10.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
We developed a flying 3d-printer that would extrude foam usually used for construction. Since it was attached to the ceiling, there was no real limit to the size of objects.
![printer](/_next/image?url=%2F1406-foam-printer%2Ffoam-printer-2.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
This was my first project using microcontrollers and motors so some things did not go as planned. The basis was an Arduino Uno running the CNC-Software GRBL and 3 NEMA17 stepper motors. These motors would act as winches controlling the length of thread thus controlling the position of the main unit in space.
The NC-Code-generation was built entirely in grasshopper: slicing the geometry to positions, calculating the kinematics up to generating raw G-Code for the controller.
![image](/_next/image?url=%2F1406-foam-printer%2Ffoam-printer-7.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
Unfortunately our skills at that time were not far enough to develop it into a fully functioning prototype. Also we had run out of time at some point.
We were however able to print a rather blocky chair at half scale, which worked as a proof-of-concept for us.
I would really love to start this project off again at some point, given that there are way more tools and software to work with – this was at a time when 3D-printing was yet to mature.
Project partners: Holger Mühlleitner