HSCM (Heat Sealing and Cutting Machine)
05/2017
With the help of the Pratt Faculty Development Fund, we've built a custom 10'x10' CNC Heat Sealing and Cutting Machine (HSCM) housed in the Center for Experimental Structures (CES) at Pratt Institute. This project builds on the work of aeroMorph (MIT Media Lab), a smaller CNC heat sealing machine. We designed and built a much larger machine to approach architectural scale inflatables. With our new ceramic custom heat sealing hot end, we're now able to heat seal up to 6mil PET and make large bladders up to 8' in diameter.
The machine itself is a work in progress. Improvements to the machine are part of the research just as much as the artifacts that it produces.
We've built and rebuilt our machine at least 10 times and designed and machined 6 different end effectors to finally reach where we are now. If you're feeling generous and would like to support this ongoing effort, please support us on... Patreon
Spiral light inflatable: Using a 2d helix cut on the CNC machine, we created this piece using small fans and LEDs