Group members:

Leah Kirssin, Bay Penny, and Trenton Rhodes

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The goal of our project was to design a habitable form constructed of custom robotic steam bent and milled wood pieces. The process was to create a parametric design in Grasshopper with custom pieces. Each unit consists of two feet, two bent primary pieces, and one twisted secondary piece. The outline, length, and slots of each piece were pulled from the model and cut from 4’x8’ sheets of 1/4” plywood with the CNC Router. Custom slots were cut into each of the primary pieces using a 5-axis robot. The pieces were steamed and then bent and twisted with the robot and left to dry for several hours to help keep the exact curvature needed and prevent spring back behavior. After all of the pieces were cut, steamed, twisted, and dried, they were assembled into units and added to the structure.