CAREER: Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication

About This Grant

Digital fabrication uses computer-controlled machines like 3D printers to make objects. These machines can improve how individuals and small companies make products by increasing the speed and precision of making products while reducing the costs and labor compared to typical ways of manufacturing. The current ability of digital fabrication to support many kinds of manufacturing is limited by how existing equipment performs when run in an automated mode. Designers and manufacturers rely on techniques for making products that are specific to domains and materials. Their techniques often require combining automatic and manual operations. However, current digital fabrication technologies enforce the same ways of operating regardless of domain or material. The machine control methods limit operators to setting machine instructions in advance and responding to machine errors. These methods prevent operators from applying their domain knowledge or manual skills in the fabrication process and keep them from using digital fabrication with their existing way of making things. This project aims to enable experts to use digital fabrication technologies in powerful domain-specific workflows. The project will investigate new machine control methods and software design techniques that blend precise automated ways of making products with an expert controlling the machine by hand. This research will create new business opportunities by allowing domain experts to adapt digital manufacturing processes to the making of their products. This project will also help users tailor digital fabrication machines to their specific needs, which will lead to new products and materials, as well as new types of digital fabrication. This project will establish domain-specific computer-numerical control (CNC) toolpath abstractions, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software interfaces, CNC machine architecture, and collaborative engineering methodologies for building cross-domain digital fabrication technologies for professional practice. Prior research has examined novice-oriented digital fabrication technologies focusing on high-level design specification and entirely automated fabrication practices or separate efforts in interactive digital fabrication interaction. To date, research in digital fabrication lacks a systematic investigation of the relationship between CNC machine mechanisms, control architecture, CAM toolpath design, and operation paradigms that blend automated and manual control. The investigators will conduct a comparative analysis of the practices of contemporary product designers and manufacturers who produce either manually or digitally fabricated products in low volume. The investigators will use insights on the barriers that practitioners from different domains face in the manufacturing workflow to inform the development of CNC control methods that enable creators to safely and efficiently reconfigure CNC machines to build new products. The investigators will pair the development of new CNC engineering techniques with the investigation of CAM design technologies that allow practitioners to precisely control machine behavior, coordinate machining operations with manual intervention, and understand and predict the fabrication workflow. The investigators will integrate their research with an education agenda that spans higher education and secondary public school education aimed at engaging students in computer science and entrepreneurial learning through applying digital fabrication to produce functional products. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.