Voronoi Puzzle

How to Make a Voronoi puzzle with HDPE sheets

Goals 🎯

• Learn how to make thin HDPE sheets.
• Experiment with digital fabrication tools to cut the sheets.

Project Management

How I’m going to organize my work.

Results 🖖

• Add photos or/and videos of the result.

Research

Some websites which I found interesting for the development of my work, or from where I learned new processes.

• HDPE Machining Guide for the Nomad CNC
• Cutting Board made from Recycled HDPE Plastic
• The work by (kahietana.dsgn)[https://www.instagram.com/p/COvqb4HDb-v/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link], making sheets with PLA leftovers from 3d printers.

The main research I did during the development of this project, was looking for the most optimal way of cutting thin HDPE sheets, ensuring a good finishing. Avoid burning/melting surfaces with laser, or broken corners with CNC.

I did tested two ways of cutting the sheets:

• Laser cutting.
• CNC milling.

CNC Milling

Annotations:

• No worth to work with the CNC milling for this project. It is difficult to make thickness uniform sheets, and it takes several hours to finish the work.

Laser cutting

I experimented with the Glowforge laser cutting machine at Brenchies lab:

Annotations:

• The material bonds when the laser cutter stops to cool down. It is needed to stick the material to the bed to avoid the bonding.

• Adding a top layer on the material, also helps to reduce the melting residues on the surface of the material caused by the laser.

• Since the material thickness is not always uniform. It may be needed to make a second pass to completely cut through the material.

How to make a Sheet of HDPE 🏊‍♀️

Step 1 - Clean the sheets

- Clean both the bottom and top surfaces where the material will be located with a smooth and a sharp blade to remove the plastic leftovers. 

Step 2 - Cooking Spray

- add cooking spray in both surfaces.
- wait 10' for it to dry.

Step 3 - Fill plastics

- fill a big cube with HDPE or PP.
- make the mix of colors you want.
- add a frame with the thickness of the material you want to reach. It is possible also to make this step without the frame. 
- locate the plastics on top of the sheet, have fun making different patterns. 

Step 4 - Press the plastic

- Press the plastics using the jack. 

Step 5 - Heat up the sheet

- It is important in this step to heat up the sheeting step by step. Starting with 30ºC on the bottom and 50ºC on the top surface. Increase 30ºC every time the temperature is reached on both surfaces, till both reach 160ºC for HDPE. 
- Press the sheet more if it's possible and add clamps on the sides when is not leveled. 
- Turn on the air extractor, and make sure the windows are open to ensure the correct ventilation of the room. 
- Wait 1h to the sheet to be ready. 

Step 6 - Cool down

- Once the sheet is ready, turn off the heating elements and wait for 5h till the sheet is ready.
- Unpress the sheets and remove your plastic sheet. 

How to make a Voronoi puzzle with Grasshoper 🏊‍♀️

Before starting this project I wanted to make puzzles with a differencial growth patterns.

When working with grasshoper, I finnally decided to make Voronoi puzzles.

You can find a tutorial about how to make Vornoi puzzles with Grasshoper (here)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSAeDY_9eQ0&t=1182s&ab_channel=RhinoGrasshopper].

How to Laser HDPE sheets 🏊‍♀️

Laser the HDPE sheet with the following parameters with the Glowforge laser cutting machine.

Retrospective 🤔

So far this project has been another ✅ on my To do’s design list! Had the idea in mind for a while, so was a very satisfying process.