Expobar / Brewster [parametric] hot water shield

thingiverse

While this project serves as a practical shield for coffee machine hot water spigots - it more so functions as an example of parametric design utilizing Rhino / Grasshopper. The design builds around a user-provided model of a machine's hot water spigot, and users can then offer curve profiles to shape each component of the design. These and model parameters can be manipulated in real time to test a wide variety of design ideas. This functionality is on display at http://youtu.be/LFxLEmNJuBU. The designs users like can then be "baked" with a single button click and exported for printing as STL's. Included are source Rhino / Grasshopper files as well as some example STLs. To use the parametric design capability, users must first create shells on top of their base tube model by selecting both and adding multiple geometries at the input point in the Grasshopper model. Typically, these shells will be created in Rhino3D with offsets of 0.1mm, followed by whatever wall thickness desired for the output shroud. This could have been accomplished with some embedded VB code in the Grasshopper model, but given the extra work required to do this - it was just as easy to perform this manually and deliver these primitives to the Grasshopper model. The additional model inputs include a curve profile defining the central axis of the tube, a curve profile specifying the cutout for the tube shroud, and two curves defining the vertical and cross-section profile of the handle. There is a Grasshopper code panel exposed in the video that showcases most of the critical parameters, allowing users to play with their hearts' content. The Grasshopper code is modestly documented by block naming, but users can use the built-in debug tools to uncover how the model works and why it performs certain actions. The design trade-offs involve creating an attractive yet functional shroud that clips well onto the water spigot, does not wobble or obstruct the view, and prints easily. The project is overall a demonstration of the power of Grasshopper - its quite impressive and allows users to rapidly test radically different ideas.