Fabrication

Unsharpened Pencils:
Fabrication of NURB Surfaces
with Standard Materials

2022, University of Kansas

The application “Unsharpened Pencils” is to develop an application to minimize the efforts in fabrication process. By revisitng the wireframe approximation of a NURB surface, it can be observed that multiple lengths of dowels are required to fabricate the surface. It is required to customize the cutting for every dowel and the process is time consuming and costly. The complexity comes from the gap between industrial standards of materials and the algorithm of approximation. By revisiting the concept of the rusty compass that can be used as divider for equal length, the core concept of this project is set up to “divide” a NURB surface with lines that all have identical length. Thusly, there is no need to cut different members, in this project, that is carpenter pencils, when the length of the member is input to the system as a parameter, thereby reducing the efforts of fabrication.