Oaky. It is not a commission but it could be as I move along and print to have someone that can help me professionally. Just seems logical. You haver really helped.
You are working in mm on your file?
My Rhino file was probably setup in mm or cm, so yes. Grasshopper doesnāt really care about units per se. If you want to use imperial, simply use a Rhino file that is configured for inches and you should be good to go. You might need to adjust the slider values though.
Iām not opposed to that.
I did a rendering. The scale is off but I think it is very cool looking as a table and printed piece.
Fran
Please send me a picture of a printed module. I absolutely want to see such a giant print, especially if itās in plastic. 
I do not have the printer yet, and I suspect the surfaces will have to broken up more with a mesh or hole patterns. Look at the films and photographs of the printed objects on the WASP printers.
The 3d printed chair was printed using wood/resin pellets and takes a week to print one!! Large surfaces have to be mitigated with grids, patterns and meshes. That is why I put the windows in. I just have to test and see.
https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-furniture-when-art-meet-additive-manufacturing/
Have you personally used a 3D printer before?
No. But I am working with a friend who has.
But as I told you this printer, prints in ceramics and clay.
In the 3D-printing scene, delta printers usually get a bad rap, mainly because they depart from the usual, Cartesian system used in most consumer, and pro-sumer grade printers. They are thus harder to maintain and understand. There simply is less information out there and spare parts could potentially be harder to source.
Given that this printer costs as much as a nice middle-class car, I guess that it could/should come with a certain degree of support, probably even a concierge! 
Iād be conscious about the fact that 3D printing is not as straightforward as most people think and the press likes to propagate.
Itās even difficult in many regards! You have to maintain (and service) a machine, know how to 3D model or at least manipulate models, know the intricacies of the 3D printing process related to the printer you use and material you want to print in, etc.
Iāve been FDM-printing (i.e. plastic extrusion) for about 5 years now, and have participated in concrete printing projects with industrial robots (which is a nightmare).
Yes, 3D printing takes a long time. The time to print something exponentially increases with the desired quality (resolution) and size of your output.
There are also consumer grade wood-plastic-composite materials available. I havenāt printed much with those, since they are abrasive and you need a hardened, stainless steel nozzle (part where the material is pushed through and exists the extruder). Standard nozzles are usually machined from brass, which is softer and tends to wear down quickly when you print in abrasive materials, but conducts heat very well.
As the Wasp is also a FDM-printer I feel pretty confident to say that the diamond grid pattern on the chair surface was probably more of a design choice than it has to do with the 3D printing process. Doing it this way, it did probably take a little less long to print, than printing a closed surface.
The chair also was probably not printed in this orientation (if it was done with FDM on the Wasp), because that would have taken lots of support material, speaking in volumes probably even more than needed for the chair itself.
If you flip the chair, so that itās open backside would sit face down on the print bed, you could possibly print this with very little or no supports at all.
The excessive use of support materials should be prevented! It unnecessarily increases print times, lots of plastic waste is produced that somehow will end up in the ocean and degrade to micorplastic, which then finds its way back into us with the consumption of fish. Supports take a long time to remove and the model needs to be post-processed to remove marks, spots, and other imperfections, which takes even longer.
Minimizing the use of supports, means being aware of the intricacies of the 3D printing process, the limitations of the printer, the material, etc. already in the design phase. The downside to this is that it obviously limits you in the design choices you can make, but that counts for everything that needs to exist in physical form at some point.
The window is probably more problematic than useful in terms of 3d-printing.
You could print each module of the current model as is, since the overhangs arenāt too bad, but the window would definitely need supports (blue) for the upper portion.
You canāt print without anything beneath! Itās true that when printing in plastic you can do bridging, but not over distances like this. Youād need to modify the geometry of the hole, at least the top part to be more 3d-printing-compliant.
Itās great to have someone with expertise that can help!
Yes, it seems to be able to do plastics and clay (with different extruders). If clay printing is anything like printing concrete, it will be even more challenging and restrictive than extruding plastic. And messy!
Wouldnāt you also need access to a huge kiln to fire these parts?
Thereās a great book about 3d printing in ceramics and the design process in Grasshopper. Iād say that itās a great book for 3D printing and Grasshopper beginners in general.
I really donāt mean to discourage you, but I think that people should be aware of the fact that 3D printing is complex and that 3D-printers are not magical production devices, like for instance the replicator in Start Trek.
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I agreeā¦ an elliptical hole could be printed without support material in this case.
Possibly worth getting a cheap FDM printer to experiment with, print small scale models and learn about the process?
Wow, nice work!
Your response is hilarious. Thank you. Everything you wrote I already know. Believe it or not there is not one WASP printer to try here in the US. That is why I have not purchased it, but rather putting together a body of work to try the machine out, and then flying to Italy.
With regards to the complexity. I am not afraid (sort of). I have maintained a full on metal shop for 25 years. Metal milling machines, lathes, a Kuhn air hammer, forges etc. I am a really good fabricator and can design and assemble almost anything. I use CAD for Waterjet and CNC fabrication with local shops. I do not know if you looked at my work at Ralph Pucci but the square bar furniture. Is fabricated with matching milled groves + - .005.
I could fabricate the table we just worked on in 3 days with Waterjet cut flat steel panels. For plastic the forms can become a crystalline structure or fabricating a puzzle like the first vase out of triangles you worked on. I realize you cannot not print with air between surfaces. I have to figure the machine out and design to its capabilities.
I have been fascinated with paramedic modeling and 3D printing. Sometimes you just got to jump in, live with it and produce. My partner Sam is an architect and he is more skeptical of furniture and is more into sculpture. You architects are not fabricators. My field is industrial design.
But hey as we say here in cowboy land, this is not my first rodeo.
We talk about getting a small printer to learn from all
time (argue) Non production printers are as slow as molasses and are filament only machines. No pellets. They are costly to print with. A high quality machine is used for fabricating heart valves, not art. My feeling is go with the production machine, the machine you are ultimately going to design with, and learn on that. If it does not work sell it.
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The table is a work in progress. A development tool it is no where ready for production. The triangle prices were much closer. Gosh do you go with your first design? Light years from finished. I actually did think 3D printing was like the replicator in Star Trek. I am crushed.
I got that book.
I would never use inserts!! never. I do not need to. As I said I can fabricate steel/plastic hybrids. I can print the same in half on its side with the opening and place a 1/4" metal panel waterjet cut with inserts to attach to the plastic. Just one way of many to figure out openings.
TABLE:W:METAL.pdf (3.2 MB) TABLE:W:METAL 2.pdf (5.5 MB)
Consider using online 3d print services such as Shapeways and iMaterialise. These give you access to almost every print technology on the market at a reasonable cost and guarantee of quality. I have often used iMaterialise for laser sintered nylon parts and the laser sintered metal parts look great too. A laser sintering 3d printer costs about Ā£250k+ I believe. Iāve used a Stratasys Connex3 multi material polyjet printer which was amazing but its just plastic parts at the end of the day.
Looking at the quality of work you produce, I canāt see how 3d printed plastic parts can match the quality of craftsmanship you are delivering. I could see uses for 3d printed assembly jigs to help with what you do. I used 3d printed jigs when I made a spiral staircase handrail in oak for example but getting a professional finish on plastic parts for high end furniture? Iād buy a 5-axis CNC instead
Thanks for your input. Yes I might try sending a part out. Did you see the 3d printed chair that I was in this blog? The plastics have come a long way. I can use steel and plastic. Craft is all about how it matches the concept. Not everything needs to be expertly crafted. Have you ever printed with pellets? Did you look at the products coming out of the wasp 3d printer? I mean if I print the lunar surface using clay, it does not have to be precise.
Yes, that chair did look good; it looks resinous. However, itās still a plastic chair and a very expensive one.
iMaterialise do offer many different surface finishes so it is possible to refine the final look of 3d printed parts.
I have not printed with pelletsā¦ the polyjet technology is liquid resin that is sprayed just like an inkjet printer and cured with UV light. I presume the pellets are fed into a hopper that melts them and forces them into the extruder. What is the benefit of this over a filament fed into an extruder?
The cheap 3d printer kit I experimented with was limited by the control of the extruderā¦ as it fed material through the nozzle it would have to rewind and try and suck up when it traversed without printing otherwise it dribbled. This lag in the āoozeā rate was what made the print surface messy. The more expensive FDM printers seem to have better control of the nozzle and extruder. Perhaps a pellet fed extruder is easier to control?
I have seen some nice attempts at 3d printing nodes for joining truss like structures togetherā¦ NODE_GENERATOR from the old forum. Iām sure it is possible to get that premium look and feel with the right plastic but when I look at your furniture and the handrails I see a quality of product that you want to touch as much as you want to look at and, for me, plastic can sometimes be a let down. Not so with solid surface acrylic and some resins, but 3d printed plastic parts.
Pellets are faster and way less expensive. LOOK at the Wasp 3d extruder pro printers. look at the things they print. The chair is printed with pellets. This is an emerging technology. Some machines are for science some for art. What kind of work do you do? Some of the new resins look like solid surfaces. Look at the Wasp examples. You are looking at my portfolio, if you go onto the Ralph Pucci website what I show in my gallery is more conceptual. For me the challenge is to make something absolutely to die for beautiful, using resins, there is a wide range of new materials. That chair was done with a wood resin. But hey if it was easy to do everyone would be doing it. I also think that crystalline structures all open weaves are very pretty, you do not get a solid surface of plastic.
I am looking forward to it. Like I mentioned before craft is married to a concept.
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