EXPLORATION_01 Parallel Components The initial exploration demonstrates the ability to achieve a three-dimensional structure form a two-dimentional pattern. The cut components are all identical in topology but differentiate according to their relative location in the patter, thus, initiating curvature apon folding the sheet material itself.

In addition, the sheet behaves as a flexure initially by flipping the direction of the cuts from side to side upon folding internally or extrnally. So potentially one could imagine a force-flow through those cuts which determines their orientation locally, as componentized flexure elements.

A bit about the process: The material cut here is a stainless still sheet of 0.0025’’ thickness. The sheet was mounted to a piece of wood in order to carry out the etching. The images to the right shoe the wood which served as the mount material.

EXPLORATION_02 Nested Components This exploration seeks to device nesting of cuts (etched, no cut outs) as a method for generating flexures. The material used here is shim stock (a type of plastic) – thin as a sheet of paper but isotropic. The following images illustrate the material behavior given the cutting pattern in bending and twisting.

EXPLORATION_03 Parallel Components 2 This exploration, much like the initial one, demonstrates the ability to achieve a three-dimensional structure form a two-dimentional pattern. The cut components are all identical in topology but differentiate according to their relative location in the patter, thus, initiating curvature apon folding the sheet material itself.

In this case the material used is shim stock, placed under one support layer of wood and mounted with tape. Scoring is not needed as the folding (flexuring) occurs almost naturally when flipping the sheet from side to side due to the nature of the material.

To the left, some initial sketches of patterns, most of which did not come through do to the ratio of detail to thickness of cut. Some of them need to be reworked.