Digital Materials for Digital Fabrication

Traditional fabrication techniques include pick-and-place, roll-to-roll, molding, patterning and more. Current research in fabrication includes algorithmic assembly [3] , programmed assembly[9], self-assembly[1,2] , assembly by folding [4] as well as guided self-assembly [2]. The above research studies the methods of assembly rather than the nature of the materials they are using for assembly. The objective of this thesis is to introduce Digital Materials and Digital Fabrication. Digital materials, as described in this thesis, can be used in all the above mentioned fabrication techniques. Moreover, it can be used in a new technique described in this thesis as digital fabrication, which takes full advantage of the material properties. Most importantly, digital materials are tuneable materials. The code describing a digital material allows one to predict and adjust the properties of the material itself. To my knowledge no other materials are tuneable in this way and this amplitude. In the same way digital communications and computation are discrete in the code space, digital fabrication is discrete in the physical space. In the same way as digital communications enabled cheap long-distance communications and digital computation enabled cheap,universal and efficient computers, digital fabrication enables cheap, efficient and universal fabrication. Building digitally is not a slight improvement of existing building techniques, it is a completely new and off the charts technique that will reduce the complexity of the assembler and can produce a higher set of objects for a smaller cost. Thesis Supervisor : Professor Neil Gershenfeld Title : MIT Media Laboratory