REU • Research Experience for Undergraduates

FuseBlocks (2024)

Enabling Expressive Multimaterial Modeling through Modular CAD-CAM Fuse Bead Prototyping

Description

Material modeling tools are essential for designing complex structures, metamaterial, and multi-material models, but their complexity limits adoption. The typical CAD-simulation-CAM workflow separates users from direct material interaction, hindering the understanding of the tangible effects from stress, strain, shear, and tension. To enable an experiential, tinkerable, and playful modeling experience, we introduce FuseBlocks, a digital fabrication design tool where fuse bead geometries are 3D printed using different functional and aesthetic thermoplastics and fused physically or digitally into larger patterns or structures. The workflow demonstrates modular CAD-CAM as a technique to minimize the role of virtual design through the rapid fabrication of modular physical building blocks. Through a set of exemplars, we demonstrate how our technique can enable craft exploration of metamaterial, multi-material, three-dimensional forms, and circuit design. We discuss the value of craft in enabling digital fabrication sketching and the portability of fuse beads as a ubiquitous thermoplastic prototyping technique.