TY - CONF

T1 - Designing Digital Materials with Volumetric Gradients

AU - Richards, Daniel Courtney

AU - Abram, Thomas Neil

AU - Rennie, Allan Edward Watson

N1 - Conference code: 15th

PY - 2017/4/27

Y1 - 2017/4/27

N2 - Next-generation engineering designs could be digitally conceived as vast constellations of material dots in space and physically fabricated with advanced Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies. AM is already transforming how we create physical objects across a wide range of manufacturing industries. However, recent advances in multi-material AM make it possible to envision a form of three-dimensional pointillism, whereby complex structures are designed and assembled on a micron-by-micron basis through the precise placement of different material “dots” within three-dimensional space. In line with traditional pointillism techniques, different compositions of many small dots would collectively give rise to higher-level properties such as colour and geometry, but also physical properties such as: topology, stiffness, flexibility, and transparency. This paper first describes exciting challenges and opportunities associated with designing multi-material objects as constellations of material dots, then outlines initial experiments which explore data-driven volumetric gradients to design and fabricate physical objects using advanced PolyJet technologies.

AB - Next-generation engineering designs could be digitally conceived as vast constellations of material dots in space and physically fabricated with advanced Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies. AM is already transforming how we create physical objects across a wide range of manufacturing industries. However, recent advances in multi-material AM make it possible to envision a form of three-dimensional pointillism, whereby complex structures are designed and assembled on a micron-by-micron basis through the precise placement of different material “dots” within three-dimensional space. In line with traditional pointillism techniques, different compositions of many small dots would collectively give rise to higher-level properties such as colour and geometry, but also physical properties such as: topology, stiffness, flexibility, and transparency. This paper first describes exciting challenges and opportunities associated with designing multi-material objects as constellations of material dots, then outlines initial experiments which explore data-driven volumetric gradients to design and fabricate physical objects using advanced PolyJet technologies.

KW - Functionally graded materials

KW - digital materials

KW - multi-material additive manufacturing

KW - voxel print

KW - computational design

M3 - Conference paper

T2 - 15th Rapid Design, Prototyping & Manufacturing Conference (RDPM2017)

Y2 - 27 April 2017 through 28 April 2017

ER -