LaserStacker

Developable Metamaterials: Mass-fabricable Metamaterials by Laser-Cutting Elastic Structures

“…With the speed benefit, a restriction in dimensionality arises, which is why the approximation of 3D objects by assembly of flat parts is an active research field. To take advantage of the speed benefit of cutting, previous works have proposed methods and software systems that help users design objects that can be assembled e. g., by using slotting joints [17,30] or finger joints [1], by extracting plates from 3D shapes [3], bending acrylic sheets [33], or welding layers of acrylic [52]. These works investigated assembling rigid plates.…”

LamiFold

“…Fabricating objects with stacked and laminated cut paper has been used as a commercial 3D printing technique by companies including Mcor and Helisys. HCI researchers have used such printers to create novel devices by embedding paper electronics [21,25]; adapted stacking fabrication techniques to thicker plastic and plywood sheets for more rapid prototyping [33]; adapted them to fabric for creating soft goods [24]; combined stacking with folding to quickly create large complex shapes [18]; and used stacking techniques to produce tooling to cast parts [34].…”

“…The key to our approach is to construct three-dimensional objects and functional mechanisms by selectively laser cutting and gluing stacks of sheet material, an approach often referred to as sheet lamination [22]. While sheet lamination using laser cutters has been explored to selectively adhere sheets of acrylic [33] and to avoid assembly of micro-scale objects [37,38], LamiFold's lamination approach is compatible with a wide variety of sheet materials and allows for making desktop-size functional objects.…”

Pop-up Print

“…Exploring time and support saving digital fabrication processes of 3D objects has been of great interest to researchers. To achieve this goal, researchers have worked on laser cutting [3,19,35,42,36,40,15,43], block stacking [20,29], and vacuum forming [41]. Although these methods can be acceptable substitutes for 3D printing, their final artifacts tend to have sharp edges or gaps, and thus cannot make a smooth and gapless surface required of many designs.…”