Walnut Torus Knot Table

I made another Torus Knot Table, this time from air-dried Walnut. The previous one is documented here.

This one sits in my living room:

As before, made from 30 parts which dovetail together end-to-end:

Here's a video of removing a finished part from the fixture after cutting - it's pretty clean right off the router:


Here are the parts as generated by a script:

This one is quite a bit smaller/tighter than the original - here's a size comparison of the computer models:

The smaller size is more suitable for a coffee table.

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UMMA Installation - Photoformance

I recently completed working on an installation at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Here’s a link to the web site for it: Photoformance: An Empathic Environment, and here's a review: UMMA's 'Photoformance' installation finds several top talents exploring notions of 'skin'. 

Shown below are the base surfaces designed by Monica Ponce de Leon and Maciej Kaczynski. My role was to help write the computer code to triangulate the surface, generate "tabs" so the triangles could be fastened together, and lay them out flat so they could be fabricated.

Here is the result of our computer code – a triangulated surface. This is a crude computer rendering – the actual material is lighter in color.

Next, all the triangle were "unrolled" flat so they could be cut on the CNC router. The final step of the code, written by Maciej, was adding the details to each tab so they can be folded, and attached to one another. There are 2072 parts – every one unique – and all carefully numbered!

This is the material they are produced from – 0.02” thick plastic. The blue is a peel off cover over each sheet.

Here are the parts being cut on the CNC router:

They come off the router quite dusty and need to be cleaned: 

Here parts are folded up and assembled into groups of six triangles:

These get transported to the site…

… and assembled…

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