15. Applicatons and Implications

The Fab Academy 2014

Digital Fabrication Laboratory. Department of Architecture.

Institute of Technology. EPS-CEU San Pablo CEU University

Adolfo Gutiérrez Sánchez

Architect

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APPLICATION AND IMPLICATIONS

The assignment

The assignment for this week was to plan and document my final project and all the implied elements contained on it.

The purpose of this week is to cover all the fields that affect to my predesign, design and production of my final project: a DOMOTIC ROOF AND FACADE.

What will it do?

The idea of my FabLab final project is to build a model of a Domotic Roof and Facade that reacts to the sunlight (in this case it will be an artificial light), and opens or closes depending on the intensity of the light that reaches the photoresistor sensor.

There will be two different movements controlled with my FabLab final project:

- The first one, the RETRACTABLE ROOF, will move according to the data collected from the sensor and will open during the daylight. The roof louvers should be oriented correctly so there will only be a difuse light coming inside the building and not a directional sunlight.

- The second one, controlled with a computer program, will open and close the facade louvers in order to simulte liveness when there is nobody home, or controlling the heat/cold inside the construction letting the sunlight come in.

Domotic houses is not the future but the present of architecture. The benefits of a house with this type of technology are really amazing:

- The most obvious is the heat/cold saving, and therefore the energy saving and less CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. This is the first thing that an architect looks for in the design of a building. Nowadays, most of the energy is provided by high CO2 issuers, such as gas, oil or nuclear energy. In architecture, it is important to take profit of such a big covered surface and try to revert the problem into our benefit and design correctly the buiding so it saves energy insetad of consuming a lot of it.

- There are not that obvious facts, such as security, controlling a facade or the artificial lights with an app for example, may avoid robbers looking like there is people inside the house, plants growing, we can control the plants irrigation with a hardware and control their substrates...

Who's done what beforehand?

There is now a long study of domotic houses, there is even some competitions and exhibitions that show some of the best models of Domotic Housing in the world: SOLAR DECATHLON. Even they show very advanced approaches of this theory, they use very rudimentary and classical tricks and solutions, some of them we have been using all my studies, but all of them have been applied with the new technologies advances that allows to reach further levels and much more definition.

Such is the success of this investigations, that there are serveral good examples of thes constructions, not just the Solar decathlon examples but some smaller approaches in architectural projects:

- Sliding House, East Anglia, England by Rijke Marsh Morgan Architects.

- "The Magic Box", Madrid, Spain by Dominique Perrault.

What materials and components will be required?

From the start of the FabLab, I have been trying to focus my assignments to my final project proposal, so I have used different techniques learnt during the course to build my mechanism:

1. Wood structure: as the wood I am using is not very thick (5 mm), I could cut it using the Laser Cutting, in order to save some time and I feel muh more comfortable with this machine.

2. Chain: the chain was a very early design that I thought it could work perfectly with this project. It is a very important piece of this project, as every single shackle has the size to fit in the gears. 3D printing the chain was a very smart idea, because the machine will give me the chain already assembled.

3. Gears: the gears have different uses in the final project, but all of them are used to controll the chain through the facade of the "building". This gears were done with the Molding and Casting assignment.

My initial design did not have a level change of the mechanics, but I found more interesting to put the servo in a differnt level of the rest of the gears in order to do some additional work and think further about the mechanics of my project.

4. Louvers: even though the louvers are not ready yet, I have the design on 3D ready to do the Molding and Casting. This piece will have a very strong importance and will developed into two molds, and I will insert all along the mold a piece of round dipstick so it fits perfectly and gives me an assembled piece of louver.

Where will they come from?

Most of the pieces that I will use in my final project model will be done with different FabLab assignments, so it will not be necessary to buy many pieces but recycle of different assignments.

The only things that could not be created were the electronic components, the servos and the materials of the molding and casting and the wood for the laser cutting, all of them have been bought from local shops and internet shopping websites.

How much will it cost?

Counting in percentage with the material used from Molding and Casting and the wood, I estimate that no more than 50€.

- Wood: 100x70 cm wooden boards - 2 pieces = 9€

- Molding and Casting kit: 60% used for the final project = 20€

- PLA for 3D printer: 10% used for the final project = 2.5€

- Servos: Futaba S3003 - 2 pieces = 16€

What parts and systems will be made?

All of the pieces will be created with different FabLab techniques: Molding and Casting, Electronics, Laser Cutting, CNC, 3D printing...

What processes will be used?

1. Computer-Aided Design.- to cut all the wooden pieces of the structure and the platform of the model.

2. Molding and Casting.- to create the gears and the louvers of the roof.

3. Computer-Controlled Machining.- to scratch the piece of wax in order to create the louvers mold.

4. Input & Output Devices.- to controll the photoresistor sensor and to move the servos

5. Electronics Design and Production.- to build with the Modela all the necessary boards used in the project: FabDuino, Photorresistor sensor, Voltage Regulator

6. Interface and Application Programming.- to control facade louvers from the computer.

7. Other techniques.- some model techniques were used such as wax welding, manual cutter and sawing.

What tasks need to be completed?

1. Before testing the engine with the chain, the servo needs to be tested in order to see if its strength is enough to move the whole structure.

2. Complete the Processing program and see if it is possible to create a small Bluetooth or radio App to control from another device.

What is the schedule?

As I will not have much time the following weeks, the project is almost finished by this moment. Some small changes in the Arduino program should be made, and complete the processing program to run the facade louvers.

For extra points, I will try to create the C++ program to control the FabDuino with the Radio boards created in the Network and Communication assignment.

How will it be evaluated?

1. Test if the chain is hard enough and does not break during the use

2. Test if the servos are strong enough to move both of the structures and if it would be necessary to add some extra ones

3. test if the louvers of the roof move according to the data collected from the sensor and are coordinated