UR5e cobot with the custom hot-wire bow for cutting Styrofoam
Hot-wire profiles bent into arcs, waves and zigzags
Natalie holding a Styrofoam block up to the UR5e cobot in the Rapid Prototyping workshop
Free-standing Styrofoam wave, cut by the robot with the hot-wire tool
Two double-curved Styrofoam panels cut with the hot-wire tool
Six hot-wire cut Styrofoam studies: waves, folds and twisted surfaces
Hot-wire cut Styrofoam samples on black: wave test plates and two curved surfaces
3D-printed stamp tools with smooth, linear and radial surfaces for pressing clay
Mounting the clay stamp tool on the UR5e robot arm
Grasshopper simulation of the robot stacking clay cylinders into a pyramid
Arranging clay cylinders on the stamping board next to the robot
Team work at the robot: stamping a series of clay cylinders
UR5e robot arm placing clay pieces onto a hand-formed clay tower
Robot arm with stamp tool, a finished clay tower in the foreground
Clay cylinders pressed by the robot with the radial stamp
Clay wall stacked by the robot from pressed clay pieces
Leaning clay tower: pieces deformed under the weight of the next
Clay tower built from robot-placed pieces

BAUHAUS 4.0

Bauhaus 4.0, Episode 1 is a research project by KHB and TU Berlin on digital technologies and workshop-based learning. In 2020/21, two UR5e cobots by Universal Robots moved into the Rapid Prototyping workshop.

We built our own end-effectors to stamp and stack clay and to cut Styrofoam with a hot wire, and designed the motion paths in Rhino and Grasshopper. Deliberate programming mistakes became part of the method.

Developed with Jasper, Lluw and Moritz, supervised by Jörg Hugo, Konrad Jünger, Andrea Rossi and Prof. Nils Krüger.

FAQ

Two UR5e cobots by Universal Robots moved into the Rapid Prototyping workshop.

Supervised by Jörg Hugo, Konrad Jünger, Andrea Rossi and Prof. Nils Krüger, we built our own end-effectors to stamp and stack clay and to cut foam with a hot wire.

We modelled the geometry parametrically in Grasshopper, derived the toolpath as a sequence of target planes, simulated reach and kinematics, and ran it on the UR5e at reduced speed.

Offsets, orientations and speeds were varied deliberately, because a flawless run reveals little. Each result fed back into the definition: an iterative loop between code, machine and material.

Hot-wire cutting (subtractive)
Wire profiles bent into arcs, waves and zigzags, swept along curved toolpaths, produced ruled and double-curved surfaces such as the free-standing wave; feed rate mattered as much as geometry.

Clay (additive)
With 3D-printed stamps and a gripper, the robot pressed reliefs and stacked elements into walls and towers. Each layer deformed under the next, so the toolpaths had to allow for tolerance.

Design ResearchRoboticsRhino & GrasshopperComputational DesignPrototypingHuman-Machine Interaction