Well, Skylar Tibbets and Marcelo Coelho are attempting to turn that notion on its head. In their new projects called Hyperform, the two designers have demonstrated that large objects can be printed within a small build volume if they’re compressed in just the right way.
According to Tibbets and Coehlo, once you have an object modelled, you can transform that design into a 1-D line that can snake its way around your printer’s build volume maximizing its space. If your model is setup to be built along this object specific, intricately mapped path, there’s effectively no limit to the size of an object that you can build.
Although compression is key to the Hyperform concept, creating a bundle of print paths can make assembling your print’s final product difficult unless, of course, you design the object to assembled in only one specific way.To demonstrate how their technique works, the two designers printed out a 50 foot chain within a Formlab 1’s 5x5x6” build volume.
Once the chain was removed from the printer, Tibbet and Coelho quickly produced the final form of their print. That was possible due to the fact that the chain was created with multi-directional notches that only attached at right angles. With this constraint in mind from the start, the designers were able to prove that their Hyperform concept does work.
In the coming months, Tibbets and Coehlo will open up the code they’ve developed for the Hyperform concept. Both designers hope that by giving architects, coders and designers access to their idea, more innovative solutions for 3D printing will be created, “We were conscious in taking only a first pass at this problem. But it’s a very interesting way to kickstart other people to take on this challenge and find new solutions”, said Tibbets.
Images Courtesy of FastCoDesign