Honing the Craft

Finishing of custom-fabricated architectural façade components represents one of the most significant components to their cost. Manually driven methods incur high labor hours of monotonous sanding and challenging ergonomic conditions for laborers while existing automation solutions typically require repetitive and/or simplistic component geometry consequently shrinking the design solution space and the number of allowable unique parts. These solutions are either economically prohibitive as a manufacturing proposition or are out of step with contemporary forms of architectural aesthetic expression and sacrifice design intent. New digital workflows, reality-capture tools, and fabrication strategies via industrial robotics offer significant opportunities to achieve both manufacturing scalability and sustainability without compromising the desired free-form architectural effects.

We propose here a reframing of the CAD model → Toolpath → Program pipeline typical to most contemporary CNC-reliant manufacturing. We choose instead to explore a more agile and flexible model with the insertion of 3D scanning into the workflow - one thereby capable of absorbing and accommodating many of the uncertainties and imperfections in a fast-paced production environment while still delivering the fidelity to manufacturing tolerances achievable with computer controlled machine tools.

This paper will explore the development and deployment of robotic sanding, honing, and cutting processes in the context of an architectural cladding product combining novel composite materials and extremes in both part scale & geometric variation with advanced digital technologies including laser scanning, surface model reconstruction, and rapid programming for industrial automation machine tools.