Hello, welcome to the presentation of ShrinCage:
4D printing Accessories that Self-Adapt.
My name is Yang Yue.
I'm a current graduate student at Zhejiang University.
The development of low-cost FDM 3D printing
has made personal fabrication accessible.
When an off-the-shelf product does not meet demands,
many people redesign and remake things on their own.
However, fabricating an adaptation for an existing object
still requires certain skills.
Measuring errors and the lack of print quality of low-cost 3D printers
usually lead to size mismatch and extra iterations.
To accommodate the uncertainty,
a jointing mechanism will be required for secured connection,
which adds further complexity to the modeling and assembly process.
We address these problems by designing ShrinCage
to produce shrinkable attachments
to fit and fasten the existing objects.
It leaves enough margin of manufacturing errors
and simplifies 3D modeling and assembly.
The shape memory properties that ShrinCage relies on
can be found on common 3D printing materials,
in this case, PLA.
In the process of 3D printing,
the thermoplastic filament is first heated
through the extruder at 200℃.
It is stretched with nozzle movement
and is adhered to the platform.
Therefore, after 3D printing,
it can be heated above 60℃
to relax the stretched polymer chains,
and thus release the build-up stress
to shrink along with the printing direction.
The shrunk state will be maintained after cooling.
Both the infill structure and the outer shell
affect the overall shape retention after shrinking.
Both the infill rate and the slicing layer height
affect the shrinkage ratio.
We recommend to use two pairs of settings
to achieve shrinkage ratios
of 25% for shrinkable parts and 5% for non-shrinkable parts.
The design pipeline of ShrinCage is friendly to novice makers.
First, roughly measure the existing object with a ruler.
A 3D scanner is no longer required.
Next, model the adapter.
We developed a design tool,
in which users can input the rough size of the object,
select an attachment template,
set the non-shrinkable part if needed,
and as a result, they will have the model ready for printing.
Then, use the common material
and any common FDM 3D printer to print.
Finally, assemble the print and heat up the object
in 90℃ of hot water or hot air.
After cooling, the spoon can be used with new grasping gesture.
Here we show a variety of adaptation examples of ShrinCage.
ShrinCage can change the appearance of existing objects.
After heating and shrinking around the heel,
the butterfly wings are strongly fixed to the high-heel.
ShrinCage caters to the special needs of certain populations
such as the elderly, children, and patients with hand disabilities.
We apply ShrinCage to both zippers and keys
to test the improved gripping performance.
For daily objects that are incomplete, broken, or having parts missing,
we can repair them and reuse them with ShrinCage.
For example, the broken ckurtain can be fixed
by reconnecting the two ends together.
We can transform wastes into shapes with new functionalities.
a discarded glass cup can be recycled
as a mushroom-shaped pen holder.
There's no adhesive involved in the joining process of ShrinCage
so the parts can be easily detached through the process of heating afterward.
We can also enhance the 3D printed parts with rich material properties
by embedding items such as magnet, rubber and stone.
We implanted stones at the bottom to stabilize the phone stand.
In the user study,
all participants successfully designed and fabricated adaptations
by using our ShrinCage system.
Please refer to our paper for more details.
I'd like to thank my coauthors
and all the collaborators who contributed along the way.
Thanks for listening and I hope you will try out ShrinCage yourself.