Final Work

-Process

Moving light object

Inside pattern

Alternative Colour/Material variations

Wood

Metallic Paint
Candy Apple Red

Metallic Paint
Space grey

Metallic Paint
Dark Purple

Anodized Niobium
Green

Beige Paint

Car paint Orange/Yellow

Carbonfiber

I Designed a light object by solely modifying the G-Code of the 3D printer. I invented my own techniques for this project such as Grouping the codes and moving them by the axis or rotating them. So I combined my 3 favorite ones and came up with a light object that you can control the patterns of…


Research Approach

I was looking to create an intervention around 3D Printing, I wanted to go for something that has not been touched before in the 3D printing industry and went to modify the Gcode” of the 3D print. A Gcode is basically a code that tells the printer to do a movement for each and every millimeter.

- Central Questions

My aim was to play with the shape of the objects in a way that you wouldn’t be able to do in 3D modeling software.
So the questions were:
- if you could actually modify a shape of a 3D print from the intricate coding systems


- Key Experiments and Insights

When I started to modify the Gcode I took weeks to figure out each layer. I tested out rather bizarre techniques. First I blocked each of the X,Y, and Z axes respectively to see how the shapes turn out. After that result, I started to make groups of layers in the code to move and rotate them. That’s when I found out about the rotation technique. Basically rotating each line to create a movement effect. That’s when I thought of adding actual movement to my object by that time I was experimenting with creating patterns by modifying the code so I decided to combine the Patterns, the movement, and the Glitch effect into my project.

I started by modifying the code of the shape of a regular cylinder 5 times over to get a unique look. As I tested with modifying patterns the wavy look of the patterns made me think this would be great for a light object with the shadows of the patterns creating a unique look.

- What was essential for this project?

The most essential thing was to figure out how the codes work it was the most complicated part of this project but definitely the most rewarding.


- What was the result?

The result was a light object that you could move layer by layer and make interesting patterns.


- Relevance of Practice-based Research

I believe the potential of modifying the Gcode of the 3D printer is endless there is a lot of variety of ways you could go about your process. As far as I discovered you can block either X, Y or Z axis to get an insane form of an object compared to the original one. You can group and modify each layer, you can rotate each group of layers, you can even delete some and make it prints in the air which is not possible if you try it on the regular printer software…

Shadows

More details of the process are available on the "PROCESS" page

Future plans for the product

Automatic rotation with servo motors

Size Variations. (a possible Human-sized one)

ROLLER L4MP