July 19, 2015 | By Simon
When it comes to finding new ways of thinking about 3D printing or where to find inspiration for unique 3D printing project, one usually needs to look no further than joining their local fab lab or other hardware design incubator to see what various artists, makers, designers and engineers are tinkering with.
For Chicago-based artist, educator and entrepreneur Tom Burtonwood, joining the Maker Media Lab as an artist-in-residence led to producing one of the more unique 3D printing mods that we've seen in quite a while.
Burtonwood, who also co-founded Mimesis, LLC a product development company focused on 3D scanning and digital fabrication and teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College, has previously worked on a range of conceptual 3D printing projects including "Plotting Curves", which centered around producing organic vessel-like forms that printed well without the use of support material.
More recently, the talented artist chose to further explore the application of color on 3D prints - such as the ability to draw shapes, patterns or even images on surfaces following a warp and weft pattern similar to those created by textile designers.
"Isn't the horizontal movement of the extruder similar to the shuttle in weaving, each layer of plastic analogous to the woof (weft)?" Asks Burtonwood. "Could the warp be unlocked by controlling the frequency of marks on a given portion of filament? That was the question — one that I wanted to start answering during my residency at the Maker Media Lab."
Burtonwood is quick to note that one of the best parts about working at the Maker Media Lab is the collaborative atmosphere, which helped in reaching out to others with questions and vice versa.
"My initial plan was to use Arduino activated solenoids to move a marker pen back and forth until Cameron Mira, one of the Maker Media Lab interns, pointed out that that would probably be a bad idea," explains Burtonwood, on the early development of his Warp/Weft filament colorizer.
"Solenoids draw a lot of power, heat up, and aren't generally that good for high frequency repetitions. So scratch the solenoids."
Once he had his Servos situation solved, the remainder of the project centered around mocking up a prototype using Rhino and supportive files from Thingiverse including the "Futaba S3004" by txoof and "Sharpie Fine Point" by beardicus to scale the resulting parts around.
"Amazingly, both the STL files were spot on and all my connections worked first time (this never happens)," said Burtonwood.
"However, I did need to make some alterations with a soldering iron to the filament guide in order to get the tip of the marker to connect with the plastic properly. It's not the prettiest mod but it got the job done at lot faster than printing a new piece entirely."
To test the device, Burtonwood first ran it using a magenta marker before ultimately decided on darker colors to make the design more legible. According to Burtonwood, while the banding on the prints are clear, they're still a ways off from appearing as a "drawing" on the surface of the 3D print - partly due to the movement of the extruder creating creating fluctuations in the movement of the plastic through the filament guides. To solve this, Burtonwood is considering mounting the device somewhere with less friction on the line and by printing more primitive shapes to help make the designs more legible for testing purposes.
"For now, this is a win," adds Burtonwood. "It is a step in the right direction and is a micro controller project I can sink my teeth into."
For those interested in firing up their own Warp/Weft machine to experiment with creating drawings or custom color designs on their own 3D prints, Burtonwood has generously supplied all of the necessary STL's, CAD data and Arduino code on the Warp/Weft project page on Thingiverse.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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