General Discussion
... -- 2005/05/05 19:43 EST reply
Wicked, back at the wiki front again... feels so good.
... -- 2005/05/05 19:44 EST reply
As I said i'll be away in brisbane till monday, lets get it on then...
... -- 2005/05/10 09:09 EST reply
hey b, how's weekend? why don't we meet on Thursday ni as suggested. I'll make a page on wikki called meetings -schedule and then the date. Why don't we organise meetings through the wikki and try to only converse through that.
I've been waiting for this book on fabricating architecture to arrive for one and a half weeks now which is finally here. (it was supposed to be overnight delivery). It should be good reading for the topic.
Also I've been chasing up fabricators and have gotten onto this guy called glen rapson who works in sydney. He was reffered to me by a English Thermoset plastics company. Anyway I've shown him the project and i'm meeting him at melbourne airport tomorrow while hes in transit on his way to tasmania. Should be good to chat more to him. I chatted to him briefly today and he suggested that we divide the steam rooms up into say 6 generic modules which can be manufactured. This would mean we would have to utilise the six modules the best we could to achieve the already given shapes.
Will be good chatting to him more tomoz.
Keep you posted
T
thurs is good. I have a window of opportunity between 6-8pm my time... I'll be online then.
over
... -- 2005/05/11 05:53 EST reply
thurs is good. I have a window of opportunity between 6-8pm my time... I'll be online then.
over
... -- 2005/05/11 08:54 EST reply
ok I finish work at 5.30 my time which is 8.30 your time can talk after that. How would 9 or 10 work your time?? Had a really busy day meeting two fabricators, one who ran me through a whole lot of fabrication methods. So lot to catch up on. Will post it somewhere on the wikki. cshdshhsh over n' out
... -- 2005/05/12 04:26 EST reply
Tom
Here is another sketch I have done after the discussion with Mark this morning.
It would be great if the plastic we use was heat sensitive and changed it colour or translucency acccording to its heat... would be a great visual tool to understand the room temperature.
We could control the heat areas by distributing the steam via the walls, integrating the system I emailed yesterday rather than just inserting it into the space.
Will be interesting to see if we can simplify such complex forms into six standard shapes.... maybe six standard shapes with more specific joins between them? (heat expanding cows maybe??)
cool, talk tonight.
I have another thing to go to at six my time, but will make meeting with you a priority... If you are not available then email me and I will go to the other thing... I am definately free from 7-8 tonight... my time...
Is this good for you?
Hope the meeting with the plastic guy went well.
b
... -- 2005/05/12 04:29 EST reply
hey B, all images n' ideas are looking good. I've gotta lot cooking up top after a big day y'day meeting two fabricators which I'll get onto the wikki tonight.
We should really try n' converse via the wikki I reckon as much as we can. I'll ask andrew how to post images on the wikki, I'll also ask him how we can get the wikki to automatically send an e-mail to our e-mails when something important is posted on the net. I'll also ask him how we can put files on the wikki for eachother to download.
Jst quick response to your ideas, yeah some sort of heat sensitive paint could be really cool. I wonder what colours there are to use. If this is the case we could have pipes running criss cross all over the interior of the walls creatig a pattern so that when steams coming through them the relative paint heats up showing an underlying pattern. cooool like your thinking I'm looking at fibreglass moulding methods at the moment which seem the most realistic and achievable. If we went with the thermo-heat sensitive idea we could paint it on the outside of the fibreglass. (jst re-read e-mail) Or yeah you mean translucency, that would be cool too, could be good exploration into the properties of fibreglass.
Yeah I'm not sure about breaking up the steam rooms into components, It would loose some of the complexity about it all. Talking to the fabricators it looks like the shape you get is all determined on how good the plug is. The plug is what you take a fibreglass mould from.
I've been thinking that if we're moulding fibreglass then we could score the plug with a pattern i.e. wood planks (pure dumb example) so that when we take a mould of the plug we get this surface texture happening aswell. I think this would be another nice layer on top of the heat/translucency idea.
I'm starting to think more about how we could build a plug which would allow for the mass customisation of the steam rooms. To design this process I think would really fit the gerative shapes of the steam rooms already, as what if we had 6 components then went to rotarua and would have to build another six. If we could design a way of creating a flexible plug to take moulds off then it wouldn't mater what shape we were trying to mould.
Anyway, I've got lots of ideas I'll post on the wikki tonight after work. I can't make it at 6 or 8 your time as I'll still be at work and can't chat. Any time after 8.30 your time is good for me, but then your going out and then i'm going away to adelaide this weekend. We havn't done alot eh, but I think it's starting to come together eh.
T
... -- 2005/05/12 02:18 EST reply
roger that. I will go to the concert tonight which should finish round midnight and drag myself back to school to meet up round 900 to 930 your time for a wiki chat...
... -- 2005/05/12 04:22 EST reply
yep sounds good, your a commited man. I'll be ready n' waiting
... -- 2005/05/12 08:03 EST reply
How about here... where are you tom???
... -- 2005/05/19 00:49 EST reply
Hi Andrew and Glen,
Glen I’ve cc’d you in on this e-mail I’ve sent to Andrew Maher. Andrew works as a research architect at SIAL at RMIT university in Melbourne http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/People/Andrew_Maher.php . Andrew was the lecturer for this project two years ago and is continuing to have involvement with us in how we construct the steam rooms.
Andrew, Glen works for Huntsman composites as an account manager (http://www.huntsman.com/composites/), and has informed us of some relevant fabrication methods using fiberglass.
I look forward to hearing any comments either of you may have on our thoughts below
Andrew, Attatched are two images showing our current thoughts on how we fabricate the steam rooms. One idea is simply using a mdf plug to create vinylester fiberglass moulds from. The only thing with this method is that It’s a once off module and can’t be changed and also how we actually attain the compound curves on mdf (or any material) is another matter altogether. Hence we would need to create a number of these plugs to achieve not only the one steam room but all five. It doesn’t really work as a ‘mass customization’ fabrication method.
Another idea, but which we have decided not to persue is to select six-ten generic parts from all steam rooms and using these ‘parts’ piece them together to achieve the indivual steam room. This use of components would dumb down the geometry of the walls and roofs so each piece can connect. It’s more like lego or about piecing bits together, something that we don’t feel is worth persuing or is interesting to fabrication or architecture.
What we are suggesting now though, and what both Barnaby and Myself are excited by is the idea of a variable plug (A plug is what you take fiberglass moulds from). Whenever you create a mould, the mould is no better than the plug, and in the case of the steam rooms you would have to build the entire steam room from wood steal etc etc to act as a plug to gain the mould. BUT, what we’re keen to do (as seen in the image) is to design one system which can be updated to create a number of shapes which retain the complexity that the steam rooms exhibit, as opposed to dumbing down their forms. A conceptual way of doing this is expressed in the image where a material is stretched between two rails, the roof and floor levels. The location of the rails are Derived by pistons/pneumatics located the relative x,y,z co-ordinates on some sort of grid. A thought was it’s similarities to aegis wall (yet to be researched more).
We’re both getting pretty excited about all this. As I’ve said I’ve been in contact with some fabricators and are about to approach a steam room company http://www.saunasteam.com.au/ These guy’s are distributors of Tylo, Some of the worlds largest steam room makers.
Barnaby’s in a presentation today for this, and getting critiqued on the work we’ve completed to date. He’s over here on the 4th for a week.
Cheers
T