Design company Freedom Of Creation (FOC), straddles the cusp between cutting edge engineering and haute-design. The future-forward company is pushing the boundaries of manufacturing production with their research and experimentation in new methods of rapid prototyping. The fruits of their research manifest in stunningly beautiful geometric designs – shaped into lamps, furniture and even textiles. The Venus lamp (above), made from laser-sintered PA would make Bucky proud with its pure geodesic structure, whereas the On the Rocks tables and chairs (below) look like scientific diagrams of molecular crystalline structure come to life. FOC is also exploring textiles (see below), and while their creations don’t necessarily look very comfortable to wear, they are quite fetching on plastic mannequins.
For the past few years FOC’s extensive research in rapid manufacturing has led to both commercial product designs, and also into the development of new industrial materials, software, and manufacturing processes. The company was founded by Janne Kyttanen 2000 in Helsinki, Finland, but has relocated to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where Janne has teamed up with Jiri Evenhuis.
Check out this fascinating video demonstrating how FOC’s laser-sintering process works:
http://www.freedomofcreation.com/video.php
All of these designs are for sale directly through FOC’s website at prices starting around 400 EUR.
*comments are still disabled, but we have got some interesting feedback from one of our readers, so please check below the images to learn more about laser-sintering..
We don’t know exactly what PA is (Polyamide? Nylon?), so could someone explain it to us?
+ Freedom Of Creation
COMMENT: Reader Serge de Gheldere from Futureproofed writes:
* Materialise MGX, a Belgian company, has been doing this (using SLS and stereolythography to produce lamps) for a couple of years now. Go see for yourself http://www.materialise-mgx.com. Amazing stuff. Very very beautiful.
* Nylon is one family of polyamides. Polyamides are polymers which have a peptide bond (O=C-N-H) or so. One of the first synthetic polymer fibres. Used in climbing ropes, panties, kitchen utensils, carpet, etc. There’s much hope that nylon 6 would be what McDonnough calls a technical nutrient, because it’s a highly stable polymer that is in fact recyclable, as opposed to downcyclable as with most polymers.
When I studied polymers and composites engineering in 1992, there were experiments with this going on at RWTH Aachen (D) â?? cool stuff: you actually reverse the polymerization reaction.
Polymerization is taking small blocks (monomers) and linking them together to form a long long continuous chain molecule. Nylon 6 is one of the few polymers where you can actually reverse that process and depolymerize the polymer back into its building blocks, and, I believe, gain some energy in doing so. Then, you end up with recovering the building blocks with which you can synthesise brand new nylon 6 fibres and polymers with.
Thanks Serge!
