Between January and April 2025, the Textilelab team had multiple hybrid encounters where all key development directions of HaptiColor came together: hardware and software, natural mediums and interactivity. These encounters let to the final forms of the ink deposition system, tools and tool holder, ink recipes and interactive tools.
Interacting with the brush stroke: January 29
These direct printing experiments made use of the first iteration of the stand-alone ink deposition system with 12V waterpumps (that came out of the experimentation during Fabricademy 2024: Open Source Hardware Week),
Changing the revolution angle of the tool work especially well with rectangular foam brushes. You can see this in the video below, where a pressure sensor is used to control the revolution.
Interacting with the ink flow: February 18-19
During this encounter, we realized we needed to make sure the ink flow could only go one direction: onto the canvas. The original idea was to have 3 pumps for 3 different colors (as we did in the Multicolor direct bioprinting encounter), but we started with only one (upgraded) pump in the new system. The two other openings in the tool caused leakage, since the ink followed the path of least resistance.
Cecilia tackled the ink flow control issue by manually inserting ink into the brush tip.
An upgraded tool with only one opening counters leaking, resulting in much better ink flow. This is the first Mordant printing test.
