Assignment 4: Liz Dolinar and Kayla Quinn

Our joint began as a part of the roof structure for the inner lodge portion of our bathhouse. The main focus of our lodge is on looking up at the stars through the perforated roof while laying on the bunks. Although the joint is no longer found in our project, the intent of the roof is still to draw your eyes upward. We began with a grid of overlapping pieces that would create an interesting geometry of hexagons. This stacking and repeating of the pattern of 3 different pieces (of various curvature) allowed for the depth of the roof structure. The individual wood strips fit together by a system of notching and are then connected together by screws (which cannot be seen from below the roof).

 

Module laid out in Rhino; CNC cut sheet (2-sided) with pocketed notches and "tabs"

Geometry/roof diagrams

Our design process began first with the geometry and figuring out the 3 piece "module" that would allow the pattern to continue along the entire roof. We had originally intended the material to be wood with some sort of glass screen to protect the occupants of the room and complete the enclosure (the roof has since changed to poured concrete with glass inset into the openings). Our CNC process began with preparing our Rhino model, which was fairly painless. The challenge came when an unidentified mistake was made and the router took 4 passes and still didn't cut all the way through. A lesson was definitely learned: always leave extra room to account for inaccuracies in RhinoCAM time estimates. The CNCed notches came out well, except for a few rounded corners (we used the smallest bit to minimize this problem). The process of assembling the modules was somewhat confusing (we completely forgot to add labels to the pieces while CNCing), but all of the pieces fit together. It was assembled backwards so that none of the screws are visible, in order to create a more seamless look that focuses on sky and stars, not screws. The intention of our joint was to help support one of our major design concepts, rather than draw attention to the joint itself.

 

Final stacked and screwed assembly