2. Digital bodies¶

The mannequin. Materials: Cardboard and Mycelium

References¶

I am very interested in the possibility of having a living mannequin. I will be using mycelium. I expect it will gradually eat the cardboard. As a reference I am following a similar process form Ecovative Design.

Check their web page - Ecovative

I will have to feed this thing. It is a bit of a personal Frankenstein

3d Scanning¶

We used a Kinect from Xbox and Skanect software at Zoi Fablab (Quito).

1) When you open Skanect, you will see 4 main steps:

Prepare / Record / Reconstruct/ Process

For the first step, we will be using the following configuration.

Scene: Body Bounding Box: 1x1x1 meters Path: Select a place to save your exported files Config File: None

2) Hit the start button and stablish a correct distance for the device (we put it about 70 cm in front of our bodies).You shall see green areas whenever you are in the correct position.

3) Start recording: Move and Spin. One person should move the kinect in a vertical axis trying to cover all areas in the scanning process (you will see how skanect interface colors the covered area). The person who is being scanned should spin around an entire loop while trying to maintain the same posture

4) Let the program make a default reconstruction. We will be using Rhino to close small gaps or holes.

5) Finally, export your model as STL or OBJ file.

Mesh Fixing¶

6) For this model, I got a small hole on the top of the head as the scanner did not covered that area. I imported to Rhino 6 and decided to create a small sphere and deform it with the "gumball" tool.

7) I placed the deformed ball over the hole, created a flat surface, transform it to a mesh and used the command "mesh boolean split" to get a flat and regular bottom of the model

8) export the Rhino file as STL or OBJ and import it to Slicer (Autodesk). // do not forget to save your Rhino file as you might need it in the future.

Model Slicer¶

9) First you have to import your 3d model (STL or OBJ file)

10) Configure the manufacturing settings upon the laser cutter you are working with.

My configuration follows:

Units: mm

MATERIAL SIZE

Length: 550

With: 400

Thickness: 4

Horizontal Margin: 5.1

Vertical Margin: 5.1

CUTTING TOOL PARAMETERS

Slot Offset: 0.1

Tool Diameter: 0.51

Such a small slot offset helps fitting parts.

11) Now you can play around the construction Techniques, Slice distribution and Slice direction. the program interface is quite friendly, you can choose many different ways to create a Waffle or a stock or radial model. Once you decide your model is ready, click on "get plans" and export your plans as as DWG

12) Import it to Rhino again, I had to "make2d" everything as the layers had an offset.

Laser Cutting¶

We will be using a SupraCNC laser cutting machine. This is a local assembled machine, it has 60 Watts and a working area of 60cm x 40cm.

Recommendations

Here some recommendations when working with this kind of machines:

To start using the laser cutting machine you have to turn On components in the following order: Turn on the chiller, turn on the airpump (touch it, make sure it is vibrating), and then turn on the laser bed.
Turn every thing off in the opposite way: turn the laser bed off then the air pump and finally, the Chiller. (alow the machine to cool down before turning it off)
Always check out for the Chiller. Temperature in the CO2 tube for this machine MUST NOT exceed 27 degrees. If temperature reaches this level, allow the machine to rest for a couple of minutes
You will be working with laser radiation, take safety rules seriously: do not operate the laser cutter when the screen protection is open
Allow the extractor of the laser cutter to work. Wait about 10 seconds before openning the machin's working area. The machine will have enough time to extract remaining fumes.

Calibration

First we will calibrate the laser focus. For this purpose, the lab has a small plywood piece of 4 mm with that we will use. Se, let the tip of the laser beam rest on the side of the plywood piece. Adjust the screw and take out the little plywood piece.

Software

13) Let’s take it from Rhino again, export your file as an SVG and open the file with the machine (laser) controller. We use CaserCAD v7

It is important to say that after some test I used Speeds of 100.00 and 50.00 for marking the guides and cutting the pieces, you have to click on "Download" buton first and then Click on "start"

13) Cut the pieces. Do not forget to make some test regarding how fit they assemble (I cut 2 pieces first, test how tight were togheder and then continued cutting)

Assamble¶

14) You can go back to Slicer and follow the guide to assemble the pieces in order

For the assemble, I used the bottom piece of the mannequin and one of the radial sides as a guide, then stack all the parallel pieces using the radial side piece as a guide.

Then, I put tugether the radial sides.

15) there you go, now lets get some mycelium.

extra credit¶

In assignment 6: Biofabricating . You will find a step by step guide of how to grow mycelium.

Once o got my Ganoderma to grow strong enough, I relocated it in the spaces between cardboard pieces of my mannequin. so far it has colonized most of the mannequin and it looks like this: