Grimshaw, D., 2018.

Digital Generation of CNC Router Surface Patterns

The research develops an innovative approach to digital production, with the potential to add value to products within commercial manufacturing contexts. The research investigates the effect that variations to boundary constraints and cutter path settings in the CNC Router programme settings, can make to the surface quality of machined work, and challenges the conventions of CNC Router manufacturing where a highly polished approach to surface finishing erases all traces of the manufacturing process. The research methodology echoes the materially engaged approach to making that is the tradition of craft, to reveal the making process as central to the final characteristic of manufactured outputs. It reveals the language of digital making as a delicate geometric pattern on the surface of the work, generated through creative engagement with the physicality of the CNC machining process. This innovative approach to manufacturing demonstrates how distinctive and individual outputs, can be efficiently generated from a single common 3D CAD model, without any modification to the underlying 3D CAD data. This original approach to the generation of variance and individuality echoes the underlying individuality of craft making and its associated higher value, and as such has the potential to enhance the value of individualised products against standardised outputs.