project

“Garbage – Environment – Design” – With Art Against Littering

As part of the cooperation project “Garbage – Environment – Design“, Sarah and Marios, two of our students, travelled to Palestine last year in September. The two-week project, organised by the Goethe-Institut in Ramallah, was intended to counteract the throwaway culture in public spaces from Europe that prevails there and to build a bridge between consumption and art. For this purpose, approaches of “upcycling” should be used, which make something new out of something old.

Two students each from Germany, France and Palestine were involved in the intercultural project and designed the exhibition and built matching exhibits in a workshop. During the ten-day stay on site, prototypes were to be produced collaboratively from everyday objects through upcycling in order to draw attention to everyday environmental problems. The project benefited from the input of other Palestinian and international experts from the fields of design, art, education and architecture.

The material such as pallets, Yton stones and plastic bottles were picked up directly from the street and were only a part of the countless resources used.
An example of the effective use of materials are the hanging gardens consisting of two green bottle walls planted with mint, which were set up to welcome exhibition visitors at the main entrance of the Goethe Institute. The results were exhibited in the Franco-German cultural area for intercultural discussion and experimentation.


In addition, during the students’ visit to Palestine, the action day “Art and Consumption” took place, in which the residents were to actively and collectively clear a piece of land of rubbish and litter.

The aim of the project was to communicate civil rights, but above all civic duties, and to mobilise local young people in particular to take on civic responsibility. Among others, the project was carried out in cooperation with Vecbox, the first Palestinian Makerspace, who brought local expertise.

Sarah and Marios were already able to draw on experience gained in the West Bank through the Yallah cooperation and exchange project in April last year, as well as through the come_IN project.

By Marios Mouratidis, ago

Project: 3D Copy Shop A Wooden Codel Was Created from a Plaster Face Cast

A Contribution from Eri

  • A photo series was created from a plaster face mask.
  • A point cloud from the photo series was created with Linux/Colmap.
  • The points were cleaned up and processed with Meshlab
  • The milling paths were generated with Pycam.
  • The toolpath files were created with a tool developed in-house.


simplified so that the GCode can be run with the Fablab CNC software as well as NCcad.

Face1_Punkte
  • The workpiece: a 1 1⁄2 year old, dried piece of end-grain wood, pre-drilled for “spaxing” onto the sacrificial plate.
  • Cutter: 6 mm cylinder for “roughing” and 6 mm spherical head for “finishing”.
Face2_Tools
Face3

About The Manufacturing Process

The feed rate for milling could be increased significantly. The cutter length was not sufficiently taken into account during the creation. This is how the saying of the day came about: “One more delivery is possible”. Before any collisions occurred, it was stopped. After remodelling and x-times finishing (Proxxon), the following emerged:

Face4
Face5
Face7

This project was kindly supported by the University of Siegen. Many thanks for this, especially to Daniel for his collaboration and Helga for text drafting and layout.

Remark:
Only a very slow Linux notebook (Ubu 19.04) is available on site. (possibly faster with SSD or cloud computing ??)
Network access for updates planned.
Friday afternoons are aggravating and not so well suited for such projects with public traffic and the limited time of the staff.
Other spax screws are missing or have not been found.
The cutter selection is limited.
Unsolved : Chatter marks.

By Marios Mouratidis, ago

Aya – a Selfmade 3D Printer

Aya – that’s a 3D printer that students of the Human-Computer Interaction master’s program produced in the winter semester 2015/2016 as part of the “3D Printing” seminar.

At the beginning of the seminar, the students were first familiarized with the basics of digital fabrication: What manufacturing processes are there, what materials can be used for printing, what are the possible application potentials? They also learned more about the individual steps of 3D printing: from modeling, to slicing (the “translation” of a 3D model into instructions for the printer), to the printing itself. For the subsequent project work, four students decided to devote themselves to building their own 3D printer.

The project participants used a kit as a basis, which already contained most of the parts needed for construction. All blueprints as well as the control software are available open source and so the students first built the printer according to the distributor’s template. However, they quickly discovered that not everything was working properly. So they decided to print some housing parts themselves using a different 3D printer in the Fab Lab and made other changes to improve print quality, such as adjusting the holder for the consumable. This was followed by a longer calibration phase, because the automatic support systems, which the printer actually has for this, unfortunately didn’t work quite as well as expected.

The students spent an entire semester working on the printer, which they named Aya (after a Japanese movie character). Aya is a Delta Robot 3D printer whose distinctive feature is its design: The three-axis system, which differs from conventional printers with linear axis systems, enables fast, precise printing. In addition to smaller test prints, the first larger prints such as an owl or a vase have already been made. Initial test runs indicate that Aya can print at a fabulous speed of up to 300-350 mm/second.

Even though the study project has now been completed, the students want to continue working on optimizing the 3D printer. For example, the installation of the control electronics or the stabilization of the base frame is being considered here to make Aya more transportable. There are also plans to test Aya with other materials such as ABS – the plastic used to make Lego bricks, for example – because so far only PLA, an environmentally friendly plastic based on (corn) starch, has been used as a material.

The students themselves learned a lot about 3D printing during the seminar and by building Aya. On Technology Day, the printer was presented and used for the first time in front of a broad public.

Aya in full size:

By Marios Mouratidis, ago

Zeit.Raum – Making Siegen come alive

The interdisciplinary research project ZEIT.RAUM Siegen is being carried out in close cooperation with citizens and aims to make the city of Siegen experience and understand its space and history in a collaborative way using innovative technology. ZEIT.RAUM is designed to facilitate collaboration and exchange between all interested parties – from academics and students to schoolchildren and amateur historians – about the city’s history, present and future. This opens up new forms of knowledge generation and transfer.

The project consists of two interlinked components: A touchable table-sized city model for interaction, produced using various digital fabrication processes and exhibited in the Siegerland Museum. Built-in sensors enable an interactive experience of the city and its history, which also stimulates individual memories. The second central element of the project is the Stadtwiki, a collaborative digital platform on Siegen’s city history, which is being developed by and for citizens. In addition to collecting information, it also serves as a forum to discuss the meaning of the data collected. Places of remembrance are identified, processed and reflected upon. All components of the project should be designed in such a way that they are easily accessible, understandable and easy to use for all interested parties.

One of the first test prints for the interactive city model

The role of the Fab Lab

We at Fab Lab are also involved in the project on several levels, especially in the creation of the interactive city model. The existing virtual 3D model of the city of Siegen, which was created by Prof. Jarosch, serves as the data basis for this. The topography is milled out of a large plate in the Lab. Which material is best suited for this is currently being tested. The true-to-the-original buildings of the city installed on it, on the other hand, are printed with the 3D printers in the Fab Lab. The sensor technology that will later be installed in the city model, which should be as user-friendly as possible, is also being developed in our lab. Several students are also involved in the project, working on individual components of the project within the framework of qualification theses.

Paper prototype for the interaction concept of the city model

Current developments

Currently, students are working on the design of the interaction concept and have, among other things, created a paper prototype of the city model. Likewise, the first prototypes for the city model have already been successfully printed and the sensor technology extensively tested. The model is printed with conductive filament so that the sensors can later be built directly into the city model. As part of this initial technical work, a developer board (see cover picture) was also created on which the following were installed: Arduino-Leonardo, Raspberry Pi 2, CAP1188-Breakout, 3D-printed touch sensor and 3D-printed matrix.

Test of the sensor technology to be installed in the city model

During one of our last project meetings, a first model of the Nikolaikirche – probably the best known landmark of the city of Siegen – was already printed. It took our Ultimaker a whole three hours to make the 1:9000 scale model.
Here you can see the result:

.

Other project partners

In addition to the Fab Lab, the University of Siegen also involves the Chair of Didactics of History headed by Prof. Dr. Bärbel Kuhn, the Chair of Practical Geodesy and Geoinformation headed by Prof. Dr. Monika Jarosch and the Chair of Computer Supported Group Work headed by Prof. Dr. Volkmar Pipek. The realisation was made possible by the support of the university and the Friends and Patrons of the Siegerlandmuseum, who see the project as an investment in the future of the Siegerlandmuseum. The Siegerland Museum is to be strengthened by ZEIT.RAUM in its role for cooperative and inclusive historical work in and with the region.

We will of course keep you informed about further developments of the project in and around the Lab.

By Marios Mouratidis, ago