Crafting robustness: Rapidly fabricating ruled surface acoustic panels

This paper reports on the extension of a simple design concept into a technique for the rapid fabrication of customized components of acoustic panels with ruled surfaces. Recent proposals for the robotic fabrication of construction components include examples of techniques for cutting ruled surface geometries through the pairing of an industrial robot arm with a linear blade. While these demonstrate the fabrication of curved and complex geometry, they do not resolve many technical issues around speed, accuracy and material finish, critical to a robust process demanded by the manufacturing industry. To address these, the research presented here pursued a detailed investigation into of the history of bandsaw cutting technology. Key knowledge of material crafts and obsolete applications of ruled geometries both offer significant insights. Using these in an iterative development, a rapidly improved robotic design and fabrication process is demonstrated here.