A London research group has 3D printed an unusual chair. To do it they developed custom software and a robotic arm-mounted extruder that allows them to print directly into the air.

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Design Computation Lab (DCL) has taken an intriguing step toward complex (and uncomfortable-looking) 3D printed furniture.

A software and hardware solution, the University College London-based group’s work takes physical form in the Voxel Chair.

A goal of their research is giving designers direct control over the toolpaths generated when slicing a 3D design. Doing so allows for a flexible means to design and fabricate structurally unusual objects. In fact, speaking of the process, co-Directors of the DCL, Manuel Jiménez Garcia and Gilles Retsin said:

“As designers we can’t usually control these or use these tool paths themselves as a medium to design with – its a very top-down process. Our software allows designers to bypass this, and immediately design with the tool paths themselves – which gives you access to much more detail and control.”

The group made similar headlines in 2016 with the production of the CurVoxels chair. This also uses a continuous custom toolpath extrusion in its construction.

Both it and the Voxel Chair are based on the iconic Verner Panton-designed Panton chair.

One particularly cool stat for the Voxel Chair is that it consists of one continuous 2.36 kilometer long extrusion.

3D Printing a Chair in Thin Air

To print this tangled web of posterior resting, the group used transparent biodegradable blue PLA filament. However, instead of the typical filament spool, they designed a hopper system that melts PLA pellets as the system prints.

The team reasons that doing this both reduces material costs (creating usable plastic as needed) and serves as a demonstration of industrial viability at scale.

This is mounted to a six-axis robotic arm, which allows for a high-degree of movement in the printing.

Garcia and Retsin explain:

“Instead of designing the form of the chair, you design the behaviors and properties of the material directly.”

The research won the 2016 Autodesk ACADIA Emerging Research Award in 2016. From this, it’ll go under the spotlight at the 2017 ACADIA conference at MIT in November.

Source: Dezeen