Founder, Gayle Parsons, sums up the Summer Print week by week.
WEEK 2
This week has been exhausting! Learning how to programme the robot in the computer languages Rhino and Grasshopper does’t come easy starting from scratch!
We were joined by the wonderful Nestor, a member of staff from one of our strategic partners, the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) who patiently led a week of training for 5 of our core team members – Myself, Megan, Tom, Adam, and Tabitha – each with different degrees of robotic expertise, varying from none at all to expert.
Our first challenge was to get the pump to extrude the much stiffer mix that Nestor had recommended would be ideal to print with. This was a real struggle but isn’t it true that we learn as much from failure as we do from success? And what we learnt from this was that our earth, which was high in clay content, when under pressure in the hose, absorbed a lot of moisture and became much more dense which led to it getting stuck in the 10m long, 35mm hose.
Several hours of desperate attempts to push the mix through, adding water, and pushing the mix down into the hopper, resulted in a failed hose, so we needed to get another to site asap – Pump Parts to the rescue again!
This time we chose a shorter hose (6.5m), plus another 2m hose to test pump our various mixes straight back into the hopper.
Nestor helped us design some small cubes and cylinders of a size that would fit the testing equipment back in the lab at Cardiff University – our research partners – and we were so proud to be able to print them! Finally we had something to show off!
The realisation that the overly high clay content was detrimental to extruding led to us adding sand to the mix which made a big difference to the consistency and meant it was much more extrudable. We were now a lot clearer about how to develop a methodology for delivering the rigorous testing regime we’d need to undertake, and with the help of Riccardo and Brunella from Cardiff University, we felt a lot more confident we’d be able to hone the mix to a perfect consistency.
Just before the end of the last day we trialled using a small amount of Xanthum Gum in the mix, which made it much stiffer, but there was no problem with extrudability. It was dry by the next day and set solid. A very encouraging indication that we should do more rigorous testing with this material.
We ended the week on Friday evening with beers and burgers on site, inviting James and Charlie from Burghley Estates to join us, as a ‘thank you’ for allowing us to use the farmyard in Pilsgate as our on-site research. Their support has been unwavering from the start, and we do so appreciate it.
