Digitally Reconfigurable Forming Surface

The digitally reconfigurable surface is mechanism for directly creating 3D contoured surfaces from a computer aided design (CAD) input. A digital design is uploaded into the device, and a grid of thousands of tiny pins–much like the popular pin-art toy–are actuated up and down to form the desired surface. A rubber sheet is held by vacuum pressure onto the tops of the pins to smooth out the surface formed by them; this surface can then be used for industrial forming operations, simple resin casting, and many other applications. The unique phase-changing clutch mechanism at the heart of the device allows it to have very small pins and to create strong surfaces at a high resolution. This technique for distributed pin actuation is the first of its kind, and has the potential to make low-cost, high-resolution, reconfigurable molds available to consumers.