Researcher: We built a robot that can use a wire to cut shapes out of foam. Me: sounds reasonable enough. R: and it can have a slack in the wire and with physics-simulation predict its path through the block to get large smooth curved areas. M: That is witchcraft, and heretic sorcery to boot! R: Unfortunately we couldn't figure out how to spin the block so we have an assistant do that. M: I can see why a spinning turntable could be an engineering nightmare.
this could prove very useful in a situation where a simple shape needs to be cut to safely hold something when shipping it. sure beats making a mold and casting it.
What it doesn't beat (neither by time nor probably in terms of cost) are those foam bags which perferctly fit the shape of the goods once steam gets blown into them. The foam-base material inside them expands through the hot, humid air (while being kept in place by plastic bag around it) - and voila. Time needed for that ~3 Minutes.
Not every robot ought to have a practical application, they can also be a showcase of engineering feats, like the precision of the mechanism and the ingenuity of the software.
@@roiification If you have an option to attach a air hose somewhere on the hand, that should be enough for foam like materials like this.. Otherwise not much needed unless you are cutting details.
As a mechanical engineering student, I never anticipated that I'll find a SIGGRAPH paper so interesting!!! Now I'm binge watching all SIGGRAPH presentations on youtube lol. Somehow I got this vid recommended (pro'lly cuz I watch some robotics stuff at times) and I'm very glad.
I don't know why this was in my recommended, however this is really neat! Just a question from a guy on the outside looking in, what stops you from attaching a motor to a lazy susan/ or whatever works best for holding the material so you don't have to physically align the substrate. Just seems like it would be more accurate as well as not as tedious. You could even have it "stop and wait" for you to remove the excess material. The math behind this is amazing.
Glad you liked in anyway! Regarding automatic rotation of the material (this question seems to pop up quite frequently): You are of course right, for practical purposes the workpiece should absolutely be mounted onto an automatic turntable - or even a third robotic arm. However, so far this has been a pure research project, and focused on the computational challenges. Since adding more hardware didn't promise any profound new insights, we chose to go for the cheapest and quickest option.
Seems that option is "an ETH student". :-D Would be interesting how to scale this approach down a bit (e.g. for less mobile applications, these robot arms look expensive!) and also take into account the actual physical properties of a heated rod (melting foam away slowly over time if it stays stationary).
@@Sukrim Could probably put the workpiece on an XYa (left/right, forward/back/perpendicular rotational axis) table, fix one end of the wire axially to another XYa table and the other to an XY table. Accomplishes the same effect albeit with less resolution for way less money using parts with good economy of scale because of the 3D printer and home CNC markets. Might even be able to use an off the shelf CNC controller if the software used here outputs g-code or something convertible to it. Really cool stuff.
@@Teth47 Clever idea! But the robot arms look like 6dof arms; with 2 of them plus a turn table you need 13 degrees of freedom, whereas each XYa table only gives you 3. Not to say that it couldn't be done with more consumer-level electronics, but it would be a real challenge at a minimum. Avoiding collisions could also be challenging, since it looks like the arms frequently move around above 3 sides of the cube rather than just one side (so you need to be able to reach around the workpiece) awesome work by the way!
It might be, but 3d printing already exists and I'm not sure it fills that particular niche better. I wonder if it could be wired up the same way as an EDM and make extremely precise metal 3d parts.
Assuming hot wire can deal with high density foam, this process can be very beneficial for things like automotive prototypes. Custom car hulls are AFAIK often sculpted from foam and then covered with fiberglass for rigidity. This process looks absolutely amazing!
I really hope we'll get to see an open-sourced variant of the software in the future, assuming the affordability of robotic arms is more feasible in the future. A 3D hotwire bot would be a cool thing to have, especially when certain shapes are outside the scope of 3D printing and CNC machining on that scale is out of the affordability range for any hobbyist.
this method is so powerful, it opens up so many possibilities, like using a flexible saw to carve soft materials like wood or soft metals perhaps, to reduce the time it takes to make large industrial parts, or help automate the process of making low number very large parts, I don't know what I'm talking about but I see the possibilities
I don't see this being useful for wood or metals. It would require the line to stiffen and be a straight line. Which would limit the possible geometries and require much more effort than tradicional CNCs (Not to mention that the back-and-forth motion of a saw would make this project a entirely new challenge). I can see this being potentially useful for lost foam casting processes. Although it probably can't handle holes and concave details very well. Actually... the more I think about it the less I see it being used in practice for any type of manufacturing... But it is a marvelous idea and can very well be used in many future applications that haven't been discovery yet. Researches like this is what makes technology evolve in such giant leaps.
My guess is that they put together a series of cuts manually in the simulation, exported the arm movements from that and re-played it. So the angles were already known, possibly set arbitrarily by a human.
I find it interesting that despite the advanced technology, the traditional method of making a coarse "rough draft" followed by finer details is still used. The same applies to expert artists and scooters
Absolutely fascinating. I don’t know why this was recommended to me, but this is quite cool. “We will watch your career with great interest” Subscriber earned.
Interesting implications for quick-scale mockups. People have been talking about 3d printing for years, yet I could imagine this tech could be applied to cut out several different shapes in the time it takes for one 3d print! Different scales of detail to be sure.
Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, at this time the code is not open source. We are currently still evaluating the best options to facilitate widespread utilization of the technology.
@@pizdaxyu most of the time the school you develop at has rights to what you create in some form. stop acting like the world should give you everything for free.
Adding one or two additional hands to rotate the table would be a great idea to remove cut parts. It would add also a great amount of futurism to tye design. Two arms cut, one or two holds the table and rotates it. Everything is moving.
Have you considered using this for fiber glass form making? I'd imagine you could do some fairly large scale automotive paneling or boat hulls from 3d models instead of clay carvings they do now
That’s pretty incredible! I assume the slow speed is chosen such that the cutting forces are insufficient to deform the wire, because I’ve seen hot wire cutters move much faster than that. Calculating the static curve of the wire looks like an interesting analytical problem, but adding dynamically changing cutting force to it would likely make it a computational problem, and not necessarily a fun one. Adapting the rough cutting path to the form of the solid is a problem I’d have no clue how to even attempt, good job with getting good results out of that!
shut up, we do need it. I took a class in arts academia where they teach about integrating new technologies into sculpture and do you have any idea how damn long it takes a conventional cnc arm to carve a block that size or larger? a whole day if you're lucky, I would've killed to get one of those in the lab. to be fair the arm we have also carves marble at the same speed, but who the hell can afford marble when foam is so cheap and convenient
@@npc6817 I does address a real need. I literally said as much. Think about large scale architectural forms, many are made of foam. This can be a useful way to prototype, and maybe even to manufacture those custom pieces.
@@AlanMelling sorry, I thougt it was sarcasm. I mean, that's what we used the carving robot for, we made those large foam prototypes since it was impossible to build them in marble, but even when we used pre-shaped blocks to ease the work on the robot it'd still take ages, this one could've easily done it in half the time
Just finished my Bachelor's and had decided to switch my field from robotics/mechatronics towards computer science and do more of the AI/ML stuff related to robotics rather than pursue the mechanics. This video and related research projects just validate my motivation even more. Thank you for this. Maybe it's a coincidence but my Bachelor's thesis also involved trying to replicate an ETHZ paper for a different robot.
Why did you use the double-actuator ABB instead of a pair of robots with a common controller? I've used Fanuc, Denso, and Epson units that have a slave/master controller system to do stuff that appears superficially similar (hand-offs, crash avoidance, team lifts) and they can definitely achieve the endpoint precision required, but I'd be curious if that ABB 2-in-1 has tighter coordination while in motion.
This would be very useful for the production of lost-foam casting for one-off projects. As in, if you don't plan to produce more than one or two of anything, then this would be ideal.
this is BEAUTIFUL ,, imagine if the robotic hands could manipulate where they grip the wire for further settings , or even , "change" tools xD they could be like michael angelo
How do you predict the way the wire is going to bend? The temperature is not going to be constant, because the part of the wire which is doing the cutting loses more heat, so the mechanical properties change along the wire. Furthermore you have to consider the force applied by the foam on the wire. I would be curious to know how you approached such a complex problem
This would be really interesting to create hard-to-make curved formwork for concrete or plaster molds. With some kind of interior coating, i think itd be interesting to make reusable molds.
So sick. I'd love to have this to make fiberglass negatives for carbon layup without machining insulation foam and making a huge mess. Cut foam > fiberglass > Prepreg
I'm wondering if there's a similar effect for working on polystyrene foam using hot air & a bunch of differently sized nozzles. I'm a sculptor and have shaped the stuff many times using just a hot air gun & a small butane torch (& metal calipers for measurements). Note that the object isn't to bring the heat source into contact with the foam, but to bring it just close enough as to cause the material to soften & collapse in on itself. I've made several portrait heads in clay using fairly anatomically accurate human skull forms made of polystyrene as part of the internal support & armature.
i think the best piece is the last one, i'm sure this robot excels in doing curves that are already in the piece to be cut. while the rabbit and other animal forms are cool, they are really rough, they could be a first step before going under a cnc router and get a better finish
Having a turning table would also allow even more Shapes. Imagine the Workpiece turning with differing speeds and directions, while the wire is cutting. You might be able to cut out stuff like double helixes.
The erosion rate of the wire/tool in EDM is fairly high, so you would have to feed a spool of the cutting tool bar through the robotic arms while cutting, or at least to replace the tool every so often to get very far through a metallic workpiece. Interesting idea.
Was it just for the challenge or is there a reason why this approach would be preferable over just using a single arm and a pointy hot-end to carve it in a more detailed manner?
The robot could do 2 cuts per turning, one on the near side & another on the far side (assuming the cutting direction has no impact on the cutting result?). ( eg. when milling it can be important to cut in the correct direction, because it removes material differently depending on material movement relative to the tool rotation )
Getting horrible future visions of bald business suit wearing industrial robots rolling around with superheated garrotes, lobbing human heads off in a blink of an eye with incredible precision.
to be honest, What I can see is the future in tumor resection in optimizing area of resection ( like Glioblastoma Multiforme ). Many of the time, the tumor is difficult to resect due to margin involving functional area, and the margin is difficult to judge . In radiotherpay of cancer, gradient field optiziation is used currently. but curvature optizimation may still be a difficult topic in the RadioTherapy treatement
I can't really think of anything else that cleanly separates and doesn't want to immediately fuse back. It would have to be a good insulator to prevent that. Even clay that's wire cut for initial blocks wouldn't really work.
Is this showcasing Machine Vision also?.. Turning it by hand means you must rely on the camera to generate reference points and know the orientation of your final part. It would be much easier to have a turntable, but I think you’re avoiding one purposely, right?
Hello! This is just human vision ;) The tripod has a scale on it, so the orientation can be measured easily. An automatic turntable would be advantageous, but for this minimal demonstrator the manually actuated version was more economic.
Wouldn’t it save time to do your series of “guess” sweeps first and during that series of sweeps, the computer begins processing the optimization in the background?
Removing the cut-off material shouldn't be that hard either. While I get the generall idea behind "use a fan to blow it off", the drawback is a possible canting of the cut-off material with the remaining, so it won't be blown away. Two ideas come to my mind: 1) implement a vacuum-nozzle (no high suction force required because of the lightweight foam materials) on both robot arms that is attached e.g. on the opposite side of the hot-wire mounting points and use the nearer/better suited arm to pick out the cut off pieces. 2) Use a third arm with the method outlined above. Sounds more expensive, but might be easier to implement. Both methods would allow to either push the waste material away - or, if that is not possible, pull it out.
the amount of residual styrofoam waste is quite big thisway unless you come up with a way to reuse it which is hard as polymers degrade when re-melted...
No more waste than the alternative...milling away the excess. If you are talking about starting with a closer approximation of finished shape made from laminated sheets...sure you could do that with this method.
I sometimes wonder why some smart people try to automate things artists usually make. Still trying to figure out how this would replace consumer foam products where economies of scale make molds far more effective than this. There might be a niche application in making a positive for some smaller molds for tool creation but even then you're looking at post processing either using a mill or an artist. Either way it'd be interesting to learn more about the algorithms than see more of this.
Researcher: We built a robot that can use a wire to cut shapes out of foam.
Me: sounds reasonable enough.
R: and it can have a slack in the wire and with physics-simulation predict its path through the block to get large smooth curved areas.
M: That is witchcraft, and heretic sorcery to boot!
R: Unfortunately we couldn't figure out how to spin the block so we have an assistant do that.
M: I can see why a spinning turntable could be an engineering nightmare.
hahaha
Maybe ABB just charges 10 grand for that extra axis control? :-P
I just commented this before reading it 😂
Damn it! why are spinning tables so hard to create?
cuz it has to be super durable to handle the weigh-.... oh wait
i might be willing to donate my old vinyl player to the cause in case the assistant turning the worktable wants to take a day off
You know the assistant turning the table is the same person doing everything else, right?
this could prove very useful in a situation where a simple shape needs to be cut to safely hold something when shipping it. sure beats making a mold and casting it.
Genius
What it doesn't beat (neither by time nor probably in terms of cost) are those foam bags which perferctly fit the shape of the goods once steam gets blown into them. The foam-base material inside them expands through the hot, humid air (while being kept in place by plastic bag around it) - and voila.
Time needed for that ~3 Minutes.
Not every robot ought to have a practical application, they can also be a showcase of engineering feats, like the precision of the mechanism and the ingenuity of the software.
I miss the Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér introductory. :(
What a time to be alive
Hold on to your papers.
2 papers down the line
Pronounced Karoy Zholnai-Feheir
cant believe 2 minute papers died
The turntable isn't hard, but what about removing the excess material? Then again, a sufficiently powerful fan could help :D
You actually don't need to remove excess material right away. The wire would cut through anyway. It's done in the video for the viewers' sake only.
@@roiification If you have an option to attach a air hose somewhere on the hand, that should be enough for foam like materials like this.. Otherwise not much needed unless you are cutting details.
They allready have robot arms, why not use them for that too
Or another arm with a suction tip.
Just spin it around fast and the excess material will fly off.
the ultimate dnd terrain bot
As a mechanical engineering student, I never anticipated that I'll find a SIGGRAPH paper so interesting!!! Now I'm binge watching all SIGGRAPH presentations on youtube lol. Somehow I got this vid recommended (pro'lly cuz I watch some robotics stuff at times) and I'm very glad.
Thanks for releasing this video publically. Very informative and inspiring.
Mind ---> blown. Wow. I'm working on a 2-axis machine that can cut foam in 2D, but this just rocks the boat.
Cool. Any idea how the rotation was synced to the cutting motion? How does the robot know the angle?
I don't know how useful is this in real life, but it's amazing!
I could smell the styrofoam fume from here
I like the aesthetic it generates.
WoW. Truly Amazing.
I don't know why this was in my recommended, however this is really neat! Just a question from a guy on the outside looking in, what stops you from attaching a motor to a lazy susan/ or whatever works best for holding the material so you don't have to physically align the substrate. Just seems like it would be more accurate as well as not as tedious. You could even have it "stop and wait" for you to remove the excess material. The math behind this is amazing.
Glad you liked in anyway!
Regarding automatic rotation of the material (this question seems to pop up quite frequently): You are of course right, for practical purposes the workpiece should absolutely be mounted onto an automatic turntable - or even a third robotic arm. However, so far this has been a pure research project, and focused on the computational challenges. Since adding more hardware didn't promise any profound new insights, we chose to go for the cheapest and quickest option.
Seems that option is "an ETH student". :-D
Would be interesting how to scale this approach down a bit (e.g. for less mobile applications, these robot arms look expensive!) and also take into account the actual physical properties of a heated rod (melting foam away slowly over time if it stays stationary).
@@simonduenser5446 "We chose to go for the cheapest and quickest option" Spoken like a true engineer.
@@Sukrim Could probably put the workpiece on an XYa (left/right, forward/back/perpendicular rotational axis) table, fix one end of the wire axially to another XYa table and the other to an XY table. Accomplishes the same effect albeit with less resolution for way less money using parts with good economy of scale because of the 3D printer and home CNC markets. Might even be able to use an off the shelf CNC controller if the software used here outputs g-code or something convertible to it.
Really cool stuff.
@@Teth47 Clever idea! But the robot arms look like 6dof arms; with 2 of them plus a turn table you need 13 degrees of freedom, whereas each XYa table only gives you 3. Not to say that it couldn't be done with more consumer-level electronics, but it would be a real challenge at a minimum. Avoiding collisions could also be challenging, since it looks like the arms frequently move around above 3 sides of the cube rather than just one side (so you need to be able to reach around the workpiece)
awesome work by the way!
I can image this being very nice for automotive exterior prototyping
It might be, but 3d printing already exists and I'm not sure it fills that particular niche better.
I wonder if it could be wired up the same way as an EDM and make extremely precise metal 3d parts.
@@andrewf8366 Seems as if it is much faster than 3D printing something at this scale.
Or, minis playground :P, for dungeon or similar
@@TheSunriseAnimation That is what i was thinking about aswell. Im not knowledgable in the field but maybe for aerodynamic models aswell
ruff cutting before the blank going to the cnc-router
working in an architecture office, i can say, this is game changing
All of the math, literally all of it
Index And yet such horrible English. Why?
Assuming hot wire can deal with high density foam, this process can be very beneficial for things like automotive prototypes. Custom car hulls are AFAIK often sculpted from foam and then covered with fiberglass for rigidity. This process looks absolutely amazing!
Robot: then the humans started playing with the cutoffs and not the model. Typical.
The infinite molds this could produce! so many parts - so many ideas! 8D
I really hope we'll get to see an open-sourced variant of the software in the future, assuming the affordability of robotic arms is more feasible in the future. A 3D hotwire bot would be a cool thing to have, especially when certain shapes are outside the scope of 3D printing and CNC machining on that scale is out of the affordability range for any hobbyist.
this method is so powerful, it opens up so many possibilities, like using a flexible saw to carve soft materials like wood or soft metals perhaps, to reduce the time it takes to make large industrial parts, or help automate the process of making low number very large parts, I don't know what I'm talking about but I see the possibilities
I don't see this being useful for wood or metals. It would require the line to stiffen and be a straight line. Which would limit the possible geometries and require much more effort than tradicional CNCs (Not to mention that the back-and-forth motion of a saw would make this project a entirely new challenge).
I can see this being potentially useful for lost foam casting processes. Although it probably can't handle holes and concave details very well.
Actually... the more I think about it the less I see it being used in practice for any type of manufacturing...
But it is a marvelous idea and can very well be used in many future applications that haven't been discovery yet. Researches like this is what makes technology evolve in such giant leaps.
@@deox4225 you are right, this technology per se may not be as useful, but something inspired by this, or the next one after that may be more amazing
this is INCREDIBLE
Cool. Any idea how the rotation was synced to the cutting motion? How does the robot know the angle?
My guess is that they put together a series of cuts manually in the simulation, exported the arm movements from that and re-played it. So the angles were already known, possibly set arbitrarily by a human.
First thing I thought: Large chess pieces! Too bad it doesn't rotate.
And yet I can't even manage to keep a hot wire tight for more than a minute
Metals expand when they heat up, try tightening it up a bit more to compensate
what a time to be alive
I find it interesting that despite the advanced technology, the traditional method of making a coarse "rough draft" followed by finer details is still used. The same applies to expert artists and scooters
Congratulations on your idea! Great job!!!
🤯😍😍😍😍😍
This is incredible. Thank you for sharing.
Ahhh! I thought this was animated until the humans arrived in frame and threw off my perception of reality.
Absolutely fascinating. I don’t know why this was recommended to me, but this is quite cool. “We will watch your career with great interest”
Subscriber earned.
Interesting implications for quick-scale mockups. People have been talking about 3d printing for years, yet I could imagine this tech could be applied to cut out several different shapes in the time it takes for one 3d print! Different scales of detail to be sure.
Is this an 'open source' project by chance? With code released as well?
Thank you for your interest.
Unfortunately, at this time the code is not open source. We are currently still evaluating the best options to facilitate widespread utilization of the technology.
Meaning they worked hard on it and they need to get paid.
@@pizdaxyu You know what stifles innovation?
Not getting paid :/
@@pizdaxyu Personal enrichment? Are you a communist? Let me kindly ask, what do you do for a living, comrade?
@@pizdaxyu most of the time the school you develop at has rights to what you create in some form. stop acting like the world should give you everything for free.
Regregards from Poland Mr Tomaszewski!
Adding one or two additional hands to rotate the table would be a great idea to remove cut parts. It would add also a great amount of futurism to tye design. Two arms cut, one or two holds the table and rotates it. Everything is moving.
Have you considered using this for fiber glass form making? I'd imagine you could do some fairly large scale automotive paneling or boat hulls from 3d models instead of clay carvings they do now
Very good.
Always suspicious when a shot is cut (end of sphere cut shot at 3:40 ).
Great work regardless, thanks!
I was thinking the same thing
That’s pretty incredible! I assume the slow speed is chosen such that the cutting forces are insufficient to deform the wire, because I’ve seen hot wire cutters move much faster than that. Calculating the static curve of the wire looks like an interesting analytical problem, but adding dynamically changing cutting force to it would likely make it a computational problem, and not necessarily a fun one. Adapting the rough cutting path to the form of the solid is a problem I’d have no clue how to even attempt, good job with getting good results out of that!
Super cool work! And it addresses a real need
😂 Good one.
shut up, we do need it.
I took a class in arts academia where they teach about integrating new technologies into sculpture and do you have any idea how damn long it takes a conventional cnc arm to carve a block that size or larger? a whole day if you're lucky, I would've killed to get one of those in the lab.
to be fair the arm we have also carves marble at the same speed, but who the hell can afford marble when foam is so cheap and convenient
@@npc6817 I does address a real need. I literally said as much.
Think about large scale architectural forms, many are made of foam. This can be a useful way to prototype, and maybe even to manufacture those custom pieces.
@@AlanMelling sorry, I thougt it was sarcasm.
I mean, that's what we used the carving robot for, we made those large foam prototypes since it was impossible to build them in marble, but even when we used pre-shaped blocks to ease the work on the robot it'd still take ages, this one could've easily done it in half the time
@@npc6817 no worries! That sounds like fun work! Seeing your ideas made manifest in reality is fulfilling.
Twelve degrees of freedom, plus one intern, to achieve three axis machining. Well done, academics. Well done.
Just finished my Bachelor's and had decided to switch my field from robotics/mechatronics towards computer science and do more of the AI/ML stuff related to robotics rather than pursue the mechanics. This video and related research projects just validate my motivation even more. Thank you for this.
Maybe it's a coincidence but my Bachelor's thesis also involved trying to replicate an ETHZ paper for a different robot.
This is ideal for shaping surfboards.
Why did you use the double-actuator ABB instead of a pair of robots with a common controller? I've used Fanuc, Denso, and Epson units that have a slave/master controller system to do stuff that appears superficially similar (hand-offs, crash avoidance, team lifts) and they can definitely achieve the endpoint precision required, but I'd be curious if that ABB 2-in-1 has tighter coordination while in motion.
This would be very useful for the production of lost-foam casting for one-off projects. As in, if you don't plan to produce more than one or two of anything, then this would be ideal.
Nice, i suppose this is faster than 3d printing high volume shape prototypes. The multi segment especially.
and way faster than milling
This is incredible
Great work! How long does the toolpath computation take? And does the user have any control over the process or is it all automated? Loving it!
this is BEAUTIFUL ,, imagine if the robotic hands could manipulate where they grip the wire for further settings , or even , "change" tools xD
they could be like michael angelo
Very interesting. Some questions. How is the object checked for accuracy. If or when the cutting wire is replaced does this require recalibration.
Have you thought of trying to make hollow pieces? where the wire is bended to a curve and rotated inside, making a vase type sculpture?
I would love to have that to make composite sandwich structures :o ! The path prediction is impressive!
How do you predict the way the wire is going to bend?
The temperature is not going to be constant, because the part of the wire which is doing the cutting loses more heat, so the mechanical properties change along the wire. Furthermore you have to consider the force applied by the foam on the wire.
I would be curious to know how you approached such a complex problem
This would be really interesting to create hard-to-make curved formwork for concrete or plaster molds. With some kind of interior coating, i think itd be interesting to make reusable molds.
This is very impressive, but what would the practical advantages of this method be? Compared to regular CNC foam cutting.
speed, curves and surface smootheness?
So sick. I'd love to have this to make fiberglass negatives for carbon layup without machining insulation foam and making a huge mess. Cut foam > fiberglass > Prepreg
This is quite amazing indeed!!
I'm wondering if there's a similar effect for working on polystyrene foam using hot air & a bunch of differently sized nozzles. I'm a sculptor and have shaped the stuff many times using just a hot air gun & a small butane torch (& metal calipers for measurements). Note that the object isn't to bring the heat source into contact with the foam, but to bring it just close enough as to cause the material to soften & collapse in on itself.
I've made several portrait heads in clay using fairly anatomically accurate human skull forms made of polystyrene as part of the internal support & armature.
This is the next 3d printing
i think the best piece is the last one, i'm sure this robot excels in doing curves that are already in the piece to be cut. while the rabbit and other animal forms are cool, they are really rough, they could be a first step before going under a cnc router and get a better finish
Incredible. Super awesome !
Having a turning table would also allow even more Shapes. Imagine the Workpiece turning with differing speeds and directions, while the wire is cutting. You might be able to cut out stuff like double helixes.
I wonder if the same principle can be done with wire EDM
Electrical Discharge Machining?
The erosion rate of the wire/tool in EDM is fairly high, so you would have to feed a spool of the cutting tool bar through the robotic arms while cutting, or at least to replace the tool every so often to get very far through a metallic workpiece. Interesting idea.
Wow! Very impressive.
truly amazing, but what's the deal with rotating the platform manually?
Great job guys!
Was it just for the challenge or is there a reason why this approach would be preferable over just using a single arm and a pointy hot-end to carve it in a more detailed manner?
The robot could do 2 cuts per turning, one on the near side & another on the far side (assuming the cutting direction has no impact on the cutting result?).
( eg. when milling it can be important to cut in the correct direction, because it removes material differently depending on material movement relative to the tool rotation )
An example of this is actually shown in the video
Impressive! Do you account for flex in the wire caused by heat and the material to be cut in the physics sim?
Amazing work.
Very cool! Keep up the good work!
Getting horrible future visions of bald business suit wearing industrial robots rolling around with superheated garrotes, lobbing human heads off in a blink of an eye with incredible precision.
Imagine what the robot can do if it could also control the foam's rotation (in 3D) while it is cutting :o
Not much more, it already has 6 DoF with the wire.
Really nice idea and project😁
Absolutely amazing
WOW great job of engineering
to be honest, What I can see is the future in tumor resection in optimizing area of resection ( like Glioblastoma Multiforme ). Many of the time, the tumor is difficult to resect due to margin involving functional area, and the margin is difficult to judge . In radiotherpay of cancer, gradient field optiziation is used currently. but curvature optizimation may still be a difficult topic in the RadioTherapy treatement
You're not doing this in grasshopper by any chance? There's something strangely familiar about this
Very cool, this could be automated even more by adding rotating table and something to remove excess foam
Wonder compared to a CNC router which is more flexible?
Now if they added an automatic turntable, it could act as a sort of lathe.
Nicely done!
don't you have any extra stepper motor to rotate that square foam ? 😄👍
This is amazing! Are there any other materials that could be sculpted in this way?
I can't really think of anything else that cleanly separates and doesn't want to immediately fuse back. It would have to be a good insulator to prevent that. Even clay that's wire cut for initial blocks wouldn't really work.
That's really awesome
Is this showcasing Machine Vision also?.. Turning it by hand means you must rely on the camera to generate reference points and know the orientation of your final part. It would be much easier to have a turntable, but I think you’re avoiding one purposely, right?
Hello! This is just human vision ;)
The tripod has a scale on it, so the orientation can be measured easily. An automatic turntable would be advantageous, but for this minimal demonstrator the manually actuated version was more economic.
Wouldn’t it save time to do your series of “guess” sweeps first and during that series of sweeps, the computer begins processing the optimization in the background?
you would need 3d scaning for feedback and it would be much more complicated, this is open loop
Wowww Flexible body simulation !
This is freakin awesome!
Removing the cut-off material shouldn't be that hard either. While I get the generall idea behind "use a fan to blow it off", the drawback is a possible canting of the cut-off material with the remaining, so it won't be blown away.
Two ideas come to my mind:
1) implement a vacuum-nozzle (no high suction force required because of the lightweight foam materials) on both robot arms that is attached e.g. on the opposite side of the hot-wire mounting points and use the nearer/better suited arm to pick out the cut off pieces.
2) Use a third arm with the method outlined above. Sounds more expensive, but might be easier to implement.
Both methods would allow to either push the waste material away - or, if that is not possible, pull it out.
this is veeeery interesting
hey simon good work
i had a very similar idea once in a dream but didn't have the resources or wherewithal
Phenomenal!
the amount of residual styrofoam waste is quite big thisway unless you come up with a way to reuse it which is hard as polymers degrade when re-melted...
No more waste than the alternative...milling away the excess. If you are talking about starting with a closer approximation of finished shape made from laminated sheets...sure you could do that with this method.
Great work.
This is so exciting! Amazing work!
Hi, Simon. Can i share your video with your credit for XatakaMéxico's social media?
Please do!
I sometimes wonder why some smart people try to automate things artists usually make.
Still trying to figure out how this would replace consumer foam products where economies of scale make molds far more effective than this. There might be a niche application in making a positive for some smaller molds for tool creation but even then you're looking at post processing either using a mill or an artist. Either way it'd be interesting to learn more about the algorithms than see more of this.
Excellent! Perhaps not for surgery?
What type of wire did you use and what was its thickness?
We used a stainless spring steel with a diameter of 1mm (at a length of 530mm).