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DIGITAL DESIGN + FABRICATION SM1, 2015 M2 JOURNAL - DEFENSE MECHANISM

JACKIE PHAN - 705931DAEL SIM

TUTOR: MICHELLE EMMA JAMES

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Sketch Design Development

Both of us embraced the idea of expandable structure. After teaming up, we decided to develop two different approaches to second skin design. Mine is a floating cloak. Dael’s approach is a sphere around the body which took the idea of hobeman sphere. Interesingly, I came accross a toy which has hobeman sphere structure behind it dur-ing my exploration in week 3. Yet I found it’s too risky to embrace the idea of a huge expandable structure like hobeman shpere, because when fully expanded, it volumn is 3-4 times larger than a closed one. Dael, however, was so obsessed with the idea that I was then interested in, too. We found that the hobeman sphere has so much potential

to make a fantastic expanding design.

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PRECEDENCE - HOBERMAN SPHERE

This precedent enormously influenced our design. We started by dismantled the toy we got. At first, I imagined our design to be a hemisphere that expands outwards. This ap-proach, however, is quite similar to the precedence with little innovation. I, then found the prototype itself is very interesting, and started my initial sketches from that, which turned out to be sucessful (as reflected in our early design). This, still, was not satisfying enough, as it was (again) simple in its forms and effects. This led to further development of our design.

Hoberman sphere is famous for its transformable structure. At first, we look at the structure as a whole. The sphere has many variations in its form, yet basically consists of different rings, connected by the hinge. I tried to replicate the basic structure of the sphere, which turned out to be quitesimple (Figure 1). Then I relized the mostdistinctive part of this sphere is the prototype (Figure 2).I also noticed that in order to make the curvy structure, the smallest element have special shape.

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2nd Skin proposed design V.1My early visualization of the design.

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Early prototype

I could not manage to assemble the whole structure by sticks, so I decided to make a static one to test the membrance.

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Social interaction

Close friends/family interaction

Personal / Intimate zone

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2nd Skin proposed design V.2

Abandoned designThis design was so simplistic in its form, and its reference to personal space is weak and abstract

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Design development - Version #1

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I built a static frame tp test the mebrance effects

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Design development - Version #2When we both agreed upon the final structure of the de-sign, new opportunities emerged. We found out that the vol-umn created by the expanding structure can be covered by fabric/paper that can produce particular visual effects. So we devided our work, one will work on the machenism, the other will focus on the effect of the membrance.

11My experiment with effects created by paper

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Fabric testing effect

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Prototype

As problems emerged when produce the middle ring to fit both arms (up-per and lower ones), Dael decided to shifted the position of the upper arms. As can be seen in the photos above, upper and lower arms are not alligned. Because the prototype is slightly different from our initial imagi-nation. it is so problematic since my paper membrance effect would not work in this structure (I thought the arms were alligned). So I decided to use fabric instead.

The fabrication of prototype is problematic. As can be seen from the sample sphere, all the hinges are made of plastic. Thus, we have to figure out an entirely different hinges (for both the element hinges and the ring hinges). It took us a while to find a proper one, which is screw. Also, our initial design is slightly different in the position of the upper and lower arms. They are supposed to allign. However, when mod-elling the prototype, due to its scale, we can not produce a larger ring which can hold 2 arms at the same time. Thus, to share the pres-sure on one point of the middle ring, we have to shift the position of the upper ring. We did not anticipate this problems, so this decision was made in the last minute. This is a learnt lesson because it generates many problems associated with the membrance, which has been tested beforehand.

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Testing Effects

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Additional effects

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