Kam-Ming Mark Tam and Caitlin
Mueller/Digital Structures,
Stress-line additive
manufacturing (SLAM), MIT,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2016
Two beams are 3D printed with an internal
structure that follows the principal stress
lines of an equivalent solid, distributing
material
in
the optimal locations for
efficient
load transfer. Despite the identical design
geometries, the beam on top, which was
printed using fused deposition modelling
(FDM) with layers parallel to the direction of
force flow, supported four times the load of
the beam on the bottom, the printed layers
of which are perpendicular to force flow,
revealing the
significant
anisotropic effects
of objects made using many 3D-printing
techniques.
Daniel Marshall, Kam-Ming
Mark Tam and Caitlin Mueller/
Digital Structures, Optimised
and robotically printed
lattice beam, MIT, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 2016
opposite bottom:
The global shape of the
lattice beam has been optimised to maximise
structural stiffness, resulting
in
an irregular,
complex geometry that would be very
difficult
to materialise using
a
conventional space
truss system of discrete bars and nodes. Even
though nearly every nodal geometry
in
the
structure
is
different, the customised robotic
fabrication ...
