I cut the outline of the shape on the laser cutter, in addition the I used the laser cutter to mark where the electronic traces should be. The copper tape was cut using the vinyl cutter.
The project is made out of 100lb. (270gr) Brisol paper, 0.006in Flexinal wire, and copper tape.
The project consists of three objects: a turtle, a snail and an interactive sheet.

Turtle
Turtles are slow it fits with the slow actuation of the Ni-Chrome wire. Here, the wire are actuation the legs but also creating the 3D shapes from the flat piece of paper

Interactive Snail
The snail has one capacitor sensor and one Ni-Chrome wire. When it’s antenna is touched it bend a little bit, something that reminds interaction with a real snail.

Interactive sheet
The sheet of paper has 4 Ni-Chrome wires and 4 capacitor sensors. When you put your hand over one of it’s four corners, the corner rises in a surprising way. Here the control is done from another small sheet of paper to keep the simple look of a blank sheet of paper.

Here is a link to the presentation:
presentation_small

I am thinking of changing my project (but I am not sure yet), so I was doing some experiments and models.
First, I tried to cast silicone over Nintanol. I laser cut acryl to make the mold and casted silicone over the components.

as you can see, nothing happened

The next thing I was trying to do is to elevate a piece of paper. Underneath the paper were 4 Nithanol wire, and pads that are being used as capacitive sensors. When you put your hand above the a corner of the paper it elevates. When you move your have it drops down.

Finally, I made a turtle (continuing the caterpilar project). the idea was to make it walk. There where partial sucesses and I think I can get in to work with some modifications.

After I gave up on the replicator I made another design for 3D printed fabric. This time I designed it for the Dimension 3D printer in the CBA shop.I designed a pattern with support material.
The concept is small balls that can be printed in different dressmaking patterns. The balls are closed and integrated inside each other but the ball on the edge have a small gap. This gap can be used to connect another sheet of printed fabric and construct a garment. Instead of sewing, you can create your shirt by clicking pieces of printed fabric.

Here is the result of what I was able to make with the amount of time and patience I had:

The idea is to have a conductive fabric cut in a certain way and connected to the positive end of a battery, and underneath it another conductive fabric that is connected to negative end of the battery.
The fabric is cut on the laser cuter and glued together with a hot glue sheet.
Then electricity consumer devices can be activated only by laying it on the fabric.

Previous Work/inspiration/related:

What I would like to do:

I would like to explore some form factors of this concept and the techniques for producing it.
The final piece will be a tablecloth, charged with electricity, that will allow the users to put or clip small electronic devices. for example, the tableware can have embed electronics and can light or beep according to what is going on the table. The plates can be heated, the salt shaker can beep when it needs refill, transparent drinking glasses can light up in different colors for identification…

Another option is to make a garment or wearable object and have small accessories clipping on it end using the electricity in it.

This is the basic code, from this code it is possible to create spiral, circular and other patterns:
/*This example illustrates a simple method to generate a set of deliberately placed
points to control the structure of a voronoi diagram. This particular example
create a beehive and allows many patterns to be built on it.*/
void setup() {
size(600,600,P3D); //size of your intended pattern
noLoop(); // don't need to use the draw loop
/*unique name for your file. if left unchanged,
will simply save file with current milisecond*/
String fileName= "voronoi"+millis()+".pdf";
beginRaw(PDF, fileName); //enables you to save your design to a pdf
setupVoronoi(); // create your voronoi generator

}


2. The flexible surface

3. The conductive surface

THe conductive surface is made out of two pieces of conductive fabric with regular fabric in between. I used conductive fabrice with glue on one side that can stick with heat when ironing. First I glued the conductive fabric to the regular fabric. I cut it in beehive shape with the laser cutter, then, I cut the other conductive fabric (without gluing it) in the same pattern. Then I glued the fabric to the other side of the regular fabric. So the regular fabric is an insulator.
Each side of the new fabric is now conductive and I can connect one side to positive and other side to negative. I connected LED to one side of the fabric when it touches the other side it is lit.

I colored thread with thermochromatic ink (just dipped it in a cup with some liquid color). After it dried I used the bumps of the Lego bricks of the walls of the mold to create a grid with two layers of thread. The original idea was to put current on the tread but the tread wasn’t conductive enough, and I couldn’t get current with the power supply. I used the heat gun instead, and after few minuted of blowing hot air the threads “disappeared” completely. The silicone kept the heat inside for a long time (about 15 minutes), before the treads was visible again.

Before Heating the piece

After Heating the piece


Beads Casting
I made some experiments with casting over beads to discover what will be the flexibility, attributes, and texture of the surfaces.
1. surface with beads:

2. Surface with beads removed after the casting:

color dipping
I wanted to try making bubbles of color in the silicone right after I pour it into the mold.
I wanted to use a syringe, but the viscosity of the silicone was to strong, so it didn’t work.
I did manage to create this interesting drawing.

I designed the shape in Solidworks in sheetmatal format so I will be able to flatten in and cut it on the late cutter:
the design in CAD

Here is the drawing of the flat caterpillar to be cut in the laser cutter

Laser cutting

I cut the traces of the vinyl cutter

Then I attached the traces on the cuter cardboard

I used water vapors to bend the cardboard and maintain it’s flexibility

This is images of the final piece

squishing sensor
The first experiment was done with a balloon filled with salty water. According to the equation of resistivity in materials, I can change the geometry of an object and get a change in the resistivity without changing the volume of the object. A balloon is perfect for this because it is very easy to change the geometry. So, basically I made a squishing sensor.
My tests with the multimeter showed that the concept is working. However, it was too messy and I had other ideas that I wanted to try so I didn’t continue working on it.

Button-potentiometer
My second experiment was creating a button-potentiometer. I imagine a shirt or a coat that the buttons on it are being used as potentiometer to control the volume or for switching songs on your MP3 player.
I didn’t want to use 3D printed parts so used the laser cutter. I was tricky to design the potentiometer and to keep the functionality of the button. My first design was from cardboard and I used pencil (graphite) as the resistor. But then I decided it will be nicer to use Acryl and to saw the yard onto the material. At the beginning I saw the conductive thread on the button but there wasn’t enough resistance and the circuit was shortened. Leah told me that I should use a more resistive tread in the potentiometer to get about 1K of resistance. I could find the right thread that will give me this resistance in this form factor but I did some experiments with Arduino code and it worked.

Responsive puppet
For my real and complete project for this week I wanted to make something fun and interactive.
I used the pressure sensor made with Velostat that we got in class.
I made a hand operated responsive puppet. The puppet has pressure sensor in each of it’s ear and another one (that operates as a bend sensor in it’s mouth). It has white LEDs for eyes and red LEDs for teeth. The eyes get dimmed down when the ears are presses and the teeth light up when the month is opened.

I printed the picture on paper  and then I stitched the shape of the fish with the paper attached to the cloth. I didn’t make any measurements because I did it at home and I didn’t have the multimeter yet. I used a double thread for this stitch.

This version didn’t work, so I made another one that will allow me to make more experiments and error corrections. I used the laser cutter  to cut cardboard with the holes for the stitches, so I could add stitches or remove it easily. This time it worked.

I connected the small fish to the plus and minus of the battery, so

when the battery switch is on, there is a current in the small fish thread. The big fish thread is connected to the minus thread of the small fish and to the pushbutton board, that is connected to the plus of the battery on it’s other end.

When I push the pushbutton, the current goes to the small fish and to the big fish. The small fish I brighter.  My guess is that more current is going to the small fish because there is less resistance.

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