WEEK16 - Wildcard Week: Soft Robotics
Ever since the first week of Fabacademy, and before it to be honest, I have been eager to try soft robotics. In December 2022 when I had decided that I wanted to do Fabacademy, I was in a bar in tokyo with Montse (FA15) and Georg (FA21) and we were talking about my next steps in my projects, where my life was going, if I should stay in Japan. And I remember being obsessed with Montse's SoftRobotics work. I didn't know what it was. All I knew was that I needed to do it; and they said, that softrobotics wasn't really part of FA but that wildcard week would come. And so.. I've been counting down the weeks and now it's here. It's finally here.
From an artistic perspective it is most intuitively introducible to my practice. Something about softrobots and their movements feel so inherently ephemeral and science fiction.
I feel so inspired from an artistic POV on the possibilities of kinetic sculptures and architectures when it comes to soft-robotics. the possibilities of output visualizations.
I definitely want to keep exploring this after fabacademy. I don't think I can include it in my final-project. But I'm so inspired by the otherworldly creatures that came from the malfunctions.
Rico also had to work on his soft-robotics for fabricademy so we decided to combine our efforts and work on this together.
WEEK SIXTEEN ASSIGNMENT
| Assignments | Completed |
|---|---|
| INDIVIDUAL | |
| - Design and produce something with a digital fabrication process (incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing) not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it. | - done |
HERO-SHOTS
HEAT VINYL
To get started we decided to play with some heat vinyl.
So I did some paper cutouts.
Then I placed the paper-cut-outs between two sheets of heat-stick vinyl and ironed it. Rico did the same:
some success with a middle finger shape, that bends up. though... it does also look like ...hmmm... something else lol...
It was interesting trying to figure out how to get the finger to flip upwards rather than just inflate. Basically I had to add small indentations at the place i wanted it to bend to create an air-flow-pressure point. I hope this description makes sense to someone other than myself.
AAAANNNYYYways... the bug had some issues unfortunately. some bubbly leaks.
SILICONE
So after trying the vinyl, it was time to go play with the main event. From the molding and casting week I knew there were multiple silicone options, so I decided to try both.
From general understanding I did already know that the quick-cure silicone which we used for the molds before would not be flexible enough to do any soft-robotics, but why not experiment right?
For the moulds I used pre-created 3D designed moulds by other people first. This is really about understanding what the design affects. And with the final project stress, I couldn't really face designing additional designs. but it is something I definitely want to follow up on, now that I have gotten better at understanding how the shaping works.
I used Ardrian's gripper mold as well as Wendy Neale's design.
TYPES
For the silicone I used the same set of silicone that we had in the Fablab left from week 13.
In particular I used these two:
BLUE: Mold Starβ’ 16 FAST by the company SMOOTH-ON
this was the quick drying one that I had used in the previous Weeks for the mould. But as concluded in that week, the blue would be too inflexible -> it ripped immediately.
So I also used
TRANSLUSCENT: SORTA-Clearβ’ 37
This was the more flexible silicone which coincidentally is also food and skin safe etc.. but it takes 4 hours to dry... which is stupid.
it was a sunny day both days so leaving them out in the sun helped.. but honestly.. still stupid... I'm impatient ahah.
REALIZATION
The shorter the cure time the less flexible the silicone. for soft robotics you need the most flexible silicone to avoid rips.
METHOD
- Mix your silicones. The brand I used uses 1 to 1.
- Pour your moulds, and also pour some extra into a flat sheet to act as a bottom later on
- Let it dry
- Once it's dry mix a new batch of silicone. Use this batch to to glue the silicone you extracted from the mold. Please make sure that you also apply a thin new layer of liquid silicone to the whole sheet ( best to spread it using an ice-cream stick or a pallette knife) then place your existing creatures face down onto the wet-sheet.
- take your brush and also seal the edges, make sure it's done properly.
- once it's cured, take it off, cut it into an sole piece and inject your pipe, through which either the air or liquid will be pushed into the shape to expand.
Notes: I did not try it with water.. however, I assume that if I want to use water, there needs to be an easy and fluid way to the water to escape again so the robot and deflate and bend in various directions....
FIRST TRIES
BOOM! Explosions
Little creatures from the ones where I didn't attach the bottoms correctly:
So close:
GRAVEYARD OF SOFT-ROBOTS
Whoops all the little popped buddies. I'm sorryyyy.
Overall the mistakes seemed to have been connected to not pouring a thick enough bottom layer, and also accidentally sealing up some of the pathways when attempting to stick on the bottom.
or alternatively only sealing the edges and not the insides, thus causing the bottom just to ballon up. (it was cute though.)
also on one run, i tried putting the silicone and the 3D printed molds into the toaster oven to speed it up... and I ended up melting the molds lol
SUCESSES
The final one did work like a charm. I suppose it was a combination of the right thickness and the right amount of lamination... I finally did exactly what I wanted it to, it looked like a breathing membrane! Slowly breathing in and out like an alien. or an otherworldly creature.
Overall there was something very creaturely about it. Very alive.
MEMBRANES (skin-electronics?!)
As a by-product of these exercises I had multiple sheets of silicone left over. Something about them was mesmerizing to me. It inspired me towards one of the other final-project ideas I had for my BioHack Academy time: artificial skin.
I think many people are inspired by such things. somewhere on the threshold between soft and hard robotics. Little mechanic creatures with soft robotic outputs or actuators...
I also was thinking about embedding soft copper pcb traces into the silicone so that i could solder components to it afterwards. or maybe create a conductive material that is membrane like to make it into wearable 2nd skin.
such science fiction dreams.
THOUGHTS AND CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion I'm really inspired by soft-robotics. Visually and conceptually it really didn't disappoint. And if I had the time I would really re-start my final-project, make do the output somehow related to soft-robotics.. but I think this might be a terrible idea... many people have told me that your fabacademy journey starts AFTER you finish fabacademy.
I'm choosing to embrace this mentality- there is so much knowledge that has been dropped on me in the past 6 months and I want to bring some of the prototypes and ideas to perfection. I really don't want them to end up as unfinished ideas in a dusty notebook, yet another project that I could not make true, or only exist as a half-version of what I imagined, superficial and lacking the true philosophical depth I had dreamed for it.
Part of the point of doing Fabacademy was to finally feel like my hands no longer let down my brain... but now i still feel like my brain is letting down my imagination.
This week was also the FabAllIn recitation and in general I have been getting a lot of information on the further FabNetwork. I want to stay a part of it. I want to learn and teach, I feel quite at home, even as an artist.
Also. I wish I could afford to do Fabricademy unfortunately thats not possible atm. But man, if it was... this week really proved to me that I would love to do Fabricademy and really experiment and push some of the envelopes there.