Fabrication
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Taking your physical computing learning to the next level now requires you to engage even further with the ‘physical’ part of the topic. This means you will have to leverage a separate set of prototyping and fabrication skills.
Fabrication Components & Materials
It will be doing the craft of making a huge disservice by attempting to explain what we can make with our hands and tools – there are too many ways to craft various materials and it all will depend on the type of prototype we are attempting to make.
Recommended reading
Specific to physical computing, where we often sit between the genres of foam/cardboard to functional and even CAD prototyping,
When it comes to electronic prototyping, these following materials and their associated genres are great starting points, along with some keywords and online resources to give you an idea of what to look for
Components / parts
| Robotics & mechanical components | Electronics components such as servos, motors |
| Gearboxes | Parts to modify rotational speed of output shaft |
| Linkages, tie rods and arms | Connecting elements between moving parts |
| Cams | Often used to translate rotational into angular or translational motion |
Materials
| Laser ply | sheets of varying thicknesses. MDF isn’t recommended due to the glue used to bond the wood fibers |
| Carbon fiber stock | rods, tubes, strips, sheets. These can be electrically conductive! |
| K&S metal stock | rods, tubes, strips, sheets |
Links
Refer to the Curated Links page for resources to vendors and other relevant content for fabrication.
Digital Fabrication
Standalone or plugin tools
Hefty software tools with quite a bit of a learning curve to them, but they provide all of the functionality needed to work in CAD (computer-aided design) and digital fabrication.
| Pepakura Designer | Good for ‘unfolding’ meshes and adding glue tabs for paper folding |
| AutoDesk Fusion 360 | Good for parametric modelling |
| Rhino 3D | a mesh-centric 3D modelling software, but has the popular Grasshopper extension to allow parametric manipulation of various data points |
| Blender | a free 3D modelling and animation software kit that is very comparable to full-fledged licensed equivalents. |
Web-based generators
These online generators provide a means to quickly draw vectors that often come in handy for laser cutting, or extrusion into solid forms as 3D prints.
| Gear Generator by Abel Vincze | A very effective tool particularly for laser cut 2D gear splines. |
| Box Generator by Jerome Leary | Super basic box generator – great for rushing out general blocks for ‘quick & dirty’ prototyping. |
| Joinery by Clement Zheng | An advanced, extremely versatile joinery maker for laser ply, cardboard, fabric. Refer to the author’s user guide to learn how to use it. General, your initial shape has to be created first using any illustration / modelling software. Joinery allows you to add the different connection options. |
| Living Loop Rhino/Grasshopper Generator by Stepan Drunks | If you have experience working in Rhino and Grasshopper, this generator will come in very handy in forming living hinges that are splined to mesh curvature. |