Hyperform will help you create big objects in small printvolumes with folding chains

Hyperform is design technology concept where you can print big structures in small 3d printer print volumes by transforming them into shapes that can be made with folding and interlocking chains. You'll get it when you watch the video.

As far as I can see there is no software released, or any real-life application but the technology will probably find its way to the market and users in some form.

As 3D printers become affordable and ubiquitous, they are also becoming smaller, placing severe constraints on the scale of objects we can create. Hyperform is an investigation into folding as a computational design strategy for compressing large scale objects into the small volume of desktop 3D printers.

Hyperform was developed by:
Marcelo Coelho (http://www.cmarcelo.com)
Skylar Tibbits (http://sjet.us/)
Formlabs, Inc (http://formlabs.com/)
Support by: Ars Electronica and [The Next Idea] Voestalpine Art and Technology Grant

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Some updates on 4d printing and baking the robots into shape

If you forgot what is 4d printing here is a new overview. Hint: fourth dimension is the time.




Good people from MIT made this robotic forms that move in preassigned forms when exposed to heat. They are also working on self-folding laser-cut materials and present designs for resistors, inductors, and capacitors, as well as sensors and actuators - the electromechanical “muscles” that enable robots’ movements.

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/bake-your-own-robot-0530


Harvard has also their technology in the game "Self-assembling Sensors for Printable Machines," by ByungHyun Shin, Samuel M. Felton, Michael T. Tolley, and Robert J. Wood from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, presented at ICRA 2014:



Harvard engineers created a self-assembling lamp whose components are printed, including some of the electronics.
The thing that comes out of the printer (it's a rather special sort of printer) is a flat multi-layer sandwich of shape-memory polymers (they take care of the actual folding, triggered by heat), thin layers of copper, layers of paper and foam for structure, and double-sided tape to keep it all stuck together.

Obviously, not every single part of this lamp was printed. Discrete components like the LED were manually soldered to the composite before folding, and the lamp was wired into an Arduino to get the capacitive touch sensor to properly control the LED.Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/harvard-self-folding-printable-lamp


More related 4d stuff:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/skylar-tibbids-talks-about-4d-printing.html

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/04/ted-talk-on-4d-printing.html

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Skylar Tibbids talks about 4D printing and Self Assembly lab

I don't get why are they calling it "printing" since there is no printing involved ... maybe it should be named something like "advanced smart interactive shape changing self assembly materials" ... maybe they will print with it in the future .. ya know ... the 4th dimension - time ... cool anyway ...





http://architecture.mit.edu/faculty/skylar-tibbits


http://selfassemblylab.net/

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