Blair Subbaraman, in his Hackaday Supercon 2024 talk on sketching with machines, highlighted the magic that happens when you work outside the built-in assumptions and get creative with CNC and 3D printing.
He showed unique objects fabricated with digital methods but in unconventional ways, driven by the mark that the endmill has left in the wood, or the design is driven by the machine tool paths, which are not encoded or specified in the geometry file.
He also demonstrated direct control of a 3D printer to create a unique 3D-printed vase with fine strings linking towers of delicately melted plastic, which could not be created using standard 3D-printing tools.
He created the p5.fab Javascript library to make it easier to craft such designs, including simple commands for controlling a 3D printer to create objects more complicated than those produced by CAD and a slicer.
He also showed how a MIDI controller with knobs and sliders could control a 3D printer, allowing the discovery of how to print neatly stacked coils in TPU by giving hands direct control over machine parameters.
