Gabriella Perry

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Wireframe

Robotic Deposition of Non-Layered Material

Harvard's Graduate School of Design, SCI-6317 Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication, Fall 2020

Wireframe identifies the advantages and constraints of a specific vein of non-layered printing called wireframe printing. This project examines the current quality of open source wireframe printing through the consumer-grade wireframe workflow using Cura slicer. Building upon the knowledge from those preliminary tests a new digital workflow was developed to generate gcode for this specific process. Later adaptions to this workflow also added in the capability to generate Robot code in addition to the gcode, furthering the scope of the process in the realm of scale. A unique attribute of this process is that the printable wireframe form is directly influenced by the physical attributes of the machine. The correlation between the nozzle height and the Wireframe Panel height means the difference between a successful print or a squashed one. Some benefits of this wireframe workflow include a 66% decrease in print time compared to its “solid” counterpart, a 60-90% decrease in material use, increased part flexibility, and a modifiable wireframe pattern.