1. Symposium on Digital Fabrication
Tools: Folding
Kenny Cheung
MIT Center for Bits and Atoms
I’ll be speaking about folding hardware, from research fab processes that can be used, today.

2. Folding Universality
An ongoing premise that you’ll have noticed in many of the previous presentations is the notion that you can make anything by folding things.
Cheung, 2009

3. MilliBot
As Max mentioned, we are building strings of centimeter scale units, with milimeter scale features, that perform the universal kinematics previously discussed.
Cheung, 2009
Cheung, 2009

4. 3D assembly
Here we see an example of the ability of these systems to self assemble with error correction, which gives us scalability.

5. SurfaceBot
And we are also working on versions that are linked into sheets wherein actuation can change the curvature of the sheets in three dimensional space
Cheung, 2009
Cheung, 2009

6. Strings of strings
And actuated versions with accordingly varying topologies…

7. 3D reconfigurable furniture
Going up in scale, this is an example of a chain of units as reconfigurable furniture, designed and built at the Arctic Fab Lab

8. DeciBot
Cheung, 2009
And these are generalized versions at a similarly large scale, with distributed control algorithms, which lends scalability, among other features… Note that the units of these folding robots are constructed themselves from folded sheets. For the rest of my presentation, I’d like to point out folding as a rapid prototyping technique that can be used today, with many advantages over 3d printing and conventional milling. The point is…
Cheung, 2009
Cheung, Green, Knaian, Tibbits 2009

9. Crease Pattern
To use the tools to quickly cut a 2d pattern… and take advantage of sheet material properties…
Cheung, 2009

10. Origami
To form complex 3D shapes.
Cheung, 2009
Cheung, 2009

11. This is a benchtop router table that was built using folded molds
This is a benchtop router table that was built using folded molds. All of the parts are composed of developable surfaces, which can be ‘unrolled’ to a flat pattern…
Cheung, 2009

12. Folding and Casting
And geometric properties of the parts can be designed so that the folded mold is highly constrained, producing accurate parts.
Cheung, 2009

13. cast in place hardware
And, as with Max and Ilan’s plaster disaster, hardware may be cast in place

14. Cementer Inventor
This is that almost finished result…
Cheung, 2009

15. cast in place heating and sensing
Extending this idea of casting hardware into parts, we have started to work on casting sensors into parts, also. This project aims at providing better control over fiber composite part quality, by incorporating temperature and dielectric sensing into the molds themselves, as well as heating elements. This avoids the increasingly large autoclaves that would otherwise be necessary to produce the increasingly large parts that the industry is using, as well as adding the ability to apply variable heating across a part to account for corresponding variations in cure rate.
Cheung, 2009

16. Fiber Composite Fab
This easily fits into a rapid prototyping molding and casting process that uses the fab lab tools. From left to right, we have the positive molds cut on an nc mill, in this case a shopbot; then a urethane negative; then a cement positive with heating and sensing equipment cast in place…
Cheung, 2009

17. Fiber Composite Fab
For making fiber composite parts. This part was produced with the molds shown in the previous slide. And now you might be wondering what happened to the folding theme of this talk – but have no fear, this fiber composite fab process may be improved…
Cheung, 2009

18. Folded Mold Fab
By folding the molds themselves, allowing simple integration of sensing and heating elements
Cheung, 2009

19. Folded Mold Fab
Deployable Scaffold