Digital fabrication strategies for timber thin-walled sections

A rise in digital fabrication technologies has led to numerous recent advances in the design and manufacture of woodworking joints. Computational generative processes can be used to create a part with integral mechanical attachments for friction-fit, adhesion-less connections between parts. These processes can additionally create machine code for production of such parts on computer numerically controlled (CNC) cutters. This paper investigates such computational processes for digital design and manufacture of timber thin-walled structural sections. Assembly procedures are first presented for rectangular hollow sections and I-sections, with a series of timber prototypes produced to demonstrate their CNC production. An experimental analysis on square hollow sections under uniaxial compressive loading is then conducted. Tight fit digitally-fabricated sections are seen to possess a structural capacity approaching that of the glued sections. Prototypes with different assembly tolerances and grain directions produce a range of novel failure modes and give insight into potential failure paths of digitally-fabricated timber sections.