Castle

    This project came out of an open-ended in-class experimental session. The idea was simple: try new techniques, combine our individual skills, and see where it takes us. Each of us brought something different to the table, and it all came together in a layered, mixed-media piece that blends digital design, 3D printing, CNC drawing, and hand-drawn filament. ✦ What We Did I designed  a series of textures inspired by fungi seen under a microscope, modeled them in Rhino, and prepared them for 3D printing. Lina  created a digital character figure to serve as the main subject for our collaborative canvas. Chloe  used the CNC machine to draw the linework of the figure onto paper. Mimi  helped gather all the parts and coordinate the assembly process. Together,  we all used 3D pens  to draw on top of the ink outlines and glued the 3D printed fungal textures onto the skirt area of the character drawing. These are the original 3D models I created, inspire...

 This is the base pattern I designed in Rhino — a series of overlapping curves inspired by organic repetition. It started from a simple idea, but seeing it build up visually was exciting. This became the foundation for the whole piece. I used Grasshopper to control all the variables for generating the toolpath — here you can see one of the sliders I created to set the Z clearance. This helped define the height between each pass of the print head. This is the simulated toolpath — basically what the 3D printer will follow. It was interesting to see how clean or messy this could get depending on how the curves overlapped or how I sorted the paths. I generated the G-code directly in Grasshopper. It includes commands for setting units, homing the printer, and each extrusion point. Writing it this way gave me full control over how the printer interprets my design. The first layers being printed on the Prusa. This moment always feels satisfying — seeing the digital sketch actually come to...

 CNC Machine Drawing     I started this project by sketching a series of organic shapes directly in Rhino. My goal was to create a flowing, biomorphic composition that felt almost like a topographic map or a cellular structure.  Then I jumped into Grasshopper to generate the toolpaths. This part involved tweaking settings like Z-clearance, XY resolution, and feed rate. I also used logic to sort curves and skip ones that were too short to make a clean drawing and streamed the gcode. Finally, I exported the toolpath into G-code using Grasshopper. This text file tells the CNC machine exactly where to move and when to lift or lower the pen. Once this was ready , I took it to the CNC machine to bring the design to life on paper. Once the G-code was ready, I moved over to the CNC computer. I used AvidCNC’s interface to import the toolpath and verify that the drawing aligned correctly with the paper dimensions. With the machine zeroed and the pen lightly touching the paper,...