[Robotgroup] Eggggselent Dry Material Plotters for Art and Architecture.

[Bruce Waters]

brooks
Eggggselent  back at you !    I am weak in the mechanicals
and I am extremely concerned about the abrasive nature
of these materials in a mechanical environment.  Therefore,
I am very pleased that you have the inclination to deal with
pneumatics and other alternatives for accurate placement
of dry material.   I bet you also have good mechanical CAD
experience which was going to be somewhat of a learning 
curve for me.

I have no nozzles that work very well yet.  I have run an
experiment using thin polycarbonate (fluorescent light tube
protector) cylinders.   I used two concentric cylinders to
form a cement cylinder embedded in plain sand.   I used
the polycarbonate as forms and manually withdrew the
form from a bucket of sand as I added dry cement mix
between the forms and plain sand inside the inner form
and outside the outer form.   I had plastic straw segments
between the forms at the top to maintain the spacing 
between forms.   
 
The point was to see if the cement would "bloom" into the
surrounding sand.   It did not to any measurable extent.
Therefore, I concluded from this experiment that I could
expect less (and probably much less) than 1/8" 
dimensional variation from cement migration during 
wetting and cure.

There will be other dimensional precision detractors such
as slightly inaccurate deposition of the dry material and 
subsequent squirm from wheel pressures and weight
compression on successively deposited layers.  
Nevertheless,  I am greatly encouraged by the 
small amount of error from moisture migration of the 
Portland cement ingredients as indicated by my 
experiment.

The end product of my experiment was a four centimeter
diameter cement pipe with 5mm walls with less than 1mm
variation in thickness.  I was using a finer largest size
particle sand than normal mortar sand.   I was not able
to detect any variation due to bloom greater than my
largest sand particle.   The pipe does have ridges along
its length because I could not withdraw the form smoothly
from the sand as I added material but there are lengths
along the pipe which came out smooth and these are
wonderfully uniform for the small dimensions involved.

I look forward to collaborating with you on upcoming
phases of development of the dry material plotters.
On a kind of earn-as-you-go concept, I was hoping
to move forward selling some of the products of these
plotterbots to finance following phases of development.
I had planned to proceed with intermediate, artsy 
flavors of the plotterbots which would produce
Navajo/Tibetan/... style sand art pictures,  then 
birdbaths and garden statuary, then small scale 
models of classical architectural things like the 
Pantheon, then boats of increasing sizes, then 
gazebos, prior to full scale residential construction 
with all its building codes, etc.  These are very 
flexible plans since there is nothing yet "cast in 
concrete" or is that "plot in concrete?" ;)

I also have ideas about ultra high precision plotterbots
which could provide superfine color detail for friezes 
and other art and architectural purposes.   I have hopes
that these may work on selected parts of the larger
items to allow a mingling of art and architecture.

One easy mingling might be reproductions of and 
variations on various Roman ceramic tile mosaics with 
at least one plotterbot equipped with pick and place 
capability.  It strikes me that some wealthy individuals 
might like a Roman style mosaic with their own or their 
consort's likeness pixelated under an olive branch 
tiara.  Our techniques could produce these on curved
or even multiply curved surfaces with far less human
labor than the Romans had to use for flat ones.
Ours could also use any scale tile  from 
Nanoceramics to Teraceramics (tm ?).   Since
she already displays evidence of activity in ceramic
mosaics and demonstrable talent in graphic art, 
maybe our cat herder would like to experiment 
with  mini ceramic tiles for "the Roman Motif"
prototype  purposes ?  Perhaps someone can
parody-morph a Roman mosaic face into a well 
known contemporary (perhaps political) personality 
for a Franklin Furnace grant in this election year.
Et two Clintons.   Beware Obama, he hath that
lean and hongry look.   Hail Ron Paul, hail yes.
McCain while you're still McAble Macbeth..  
Romney us and Reemney us.   To Huckster be 
or not to Huckster be, that is the question.   
Oval Office Rerun: Slick Willy Fiddled While 
Rodham Burned.

The plotterbots might also be slightly adapted to 
produce custom ceramics for specific mosaics.  
A dry plotterbot process could likely also work 
well for on-demand, moldless custom ceramic 
production besides for ferrocement.  Plotterbots 
could certainly simulate (in matt, pastel colors) 
custom ceramic mosaics for the proletariat using 
ferrocement.

Bruce Waters