In this week’s exercise, I focused on the learning of the linear pattern and created a few variables out of it. The linear pattern is basically about two parts, creating a shape/polygon using dots and lines, and producing it on a designated line/curve. The first variable that I created is based on Marcela’s tutorial, but I turned the uniform height of the top line of dots into different heights using Graph Mapper (connected to Unit Z – Move), so that there will be more variables visually. I didn’t print out this one, but Luna printed something similar for our final project, in an attempt to use the pattern to mimic the cycle of bipolar disorder.
For the second variable, I decided to create something to echo the pneumatic fingertips in our project, so I firstly created a curve, divided it, and generated lines of different heights, and finally I used Multipipe to give the lines a shape. However, I found out that it can be very hard to print something whose bottoms are as round like this.
That drove me to create the third variable. Still based on a divided curve and circles on each dividing points, this time the shape was not determined by Multipipe, but rather Graph Mapper, so that they could be flat on the bottom.
The printing process was a rough one. I spent a whole morning printing it, while most of them got into problems even before the pause. It was hard to determine where went wrong because I had changed the printing speed for the first layer, switched filament and printers, but it didn’t seem to help. The lab assistant pointed out that it might be because that it did not really have a complete bottom, plus each of them were in a round shape, and that might double the printing difficulty. Eventually, I printed one line of the pattern and a complete piece (this one experienced quite a lot of retractions when it came to the top, but overall looked weirdly nice)
