Vessel for Growth

This page presents a summary of my final project for 4.02A Introduction to Design Intensive over January 2022.

The prompt was "Vessel for Growth". I attempted to use crystal growth of Borax as a method for solidifying origami structures in the context of "deploying" flatpacked material, and "selective hardening" to change the dynamics of folded structures.

The idea for deployment is a method for solidifying a structure that was tightly packed for travel or storage. Selective hardening is used to change the compliance in parts of a folded structure in order to improve their strength and versatility. The final Kresling structure demonstrates that by treating the surface of the selected paper with a rubberized coating. From intial experiments, it seems that it is possible to weaken the adhesion between the crystal growths and the paper structure. In my final presentation, I collapsed the pre-scored pattern in a live demonstration to show the kresling mechanism in action. Although the pre-scored pattern was not effective for programming the collapse, new creases that accomplish the same motion were formed instead.

Figure: Example test structures for selective hardening (left) and deploying (right)

Figure: Treatement process for selective hardening

Figure: Prior use of origami mechanisms and deployement

Material Tests

Figure: Testing crystal growth on different materials

Figure: Investigating effects of tape, varnish treatement, and laser etching on crystal growth

Figure:Laser scored paper (left) and effect of different dash spacing(right)

Deployment

Figure: Compressing the paper along the creases

Figure: Deployement of flatpack paper in Borax solution

Figure: Resulting rigid structure of deployed flatpack paper

Selective hardening

Figure:Process and setup for selective hardening of a Kresling structure

Figure: Laser cutting of Kresling pattern

Figure: Crystal growth of Kresling structure in Borax solution

Figure: Kresling structure with selectively rigid and compliant parts, out of solution (left), with crystals removed (center), and collapsed (right)