Overview

The VIVITA Workshops are a set of two workshops that were run by VIVITA Singapore.

Structure Building

The structure building workshop was held off school campus at the VIVITA makerspace. The workshop was a 3-hour long session where myself and a few others were taught about considering how to most efficiently use materials while preserving strength.

Task 1

The task was to build a miniturised stool out of cardboard, the requirements were:

20cm × 20cm × 20cm size limit
(height has to be between 19.5-20 cm )
Lighter is better

My group's stool used triangles and circles for structural support, and nearly managed to hold up an entire person!

It's quite amazing that something that is traditionally seen as relatively weak material (compared to plastic or others) is able to hold up so much weight!

Task 2

Task 2 was to utilise a software called Linearity to sketch out a net of the stool we had created. The sketch would then be sent to a laser cutter to be cut an assembled.

In my opinion, the hardest part about this task was not the unfolding of the object into a net, but rather taking into account the tolerances at specific sides of the model so as to ensure the different laser cut parts fit together.

Laser cutters have 2 modes, Cutting and Engraving. Every laser cutter has to be tuned to cut specific materials and depths to achieve a cut or an engraving.

Takeaways

Triangles are the strongest shapes for adding rigidity.
Some materials have different strengths in different orientations. i.e. cardboard has 'flutes' which bend easily in some directions.
Interlocking geometry, similar to the Japanese woodworking art "Sashimono", coupled with glue is stronger than using glue directly for joinery
Accounting for manufacturing tolerances when unfolding objects to be laser cut

3D Printing

The basic 3D printing course mainly comprised of CAD design functions and optimisations for 3D printing.

I do not have too much to say about this workshop as it comprised of what I had learnt myself about the topic.

See 3D Printing and Ender-3 Pro

Overall I really enjoyed the workshops, it was a good way to interact with like minded people who really loved what they did.