I’m fortunate to be able to tie my current research into an upcoming site-specific exhibition piece, which will be shown at the offices of Life technologies, a local stem cell research lab.  When we toured their facility, we were shown some amazing video of cardiac cells independently pulsing in a ring format.

This has become my inspiration point for the installation.  It is my hope to use muscle wires to create the pulsing effect on my printed textile, potentially tied to some sort of motion sensor or other input.

In order to gain a familiarity with the basics of muscle wires, I completed the Origami Flapping Crane tutorial provided by MIT’s High-Low Tech Lab.  This was a great little project that very successfully illustrated the basic use of Flexinol wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQKggIUqx0s

With that success under my belt, I started experimenting with ways to utilize the muscle wire’s contracting properties to create the pulsing circles on a textile (most likely felt in this case).  One of the core issues with Flexinol is that while it contracts when heated, it does not return to it’s original length when cooled.  An opposite force of some kind must be applied.  In the flapping crane example, the stiffness of the paper is enough to pull the wire back into shape.  A little research led to the suggestion of using music or piano wire as a kind of spring, both to actuate the fabric and to return the wire to it’s original length.

My first spring concept:

The red lines show where the muscle wire would be attached.  This arrangement would allow the muscle wire to contract the music wire while maintaining a circular shape.  Unfortunately, the music wire I chose was far too strong for this application and the muscle wire was unable to move it.  On a whim, I tried a more low-tech option and just sewed the wire onto a piece of felt in a similar arrangement to see what happened.

The results were also less than successful.  Apparently one of the other limitations of Flexinol is that the overall change in length is very small, along the lines of 5-7%.  So while this arrangement moved the fabric, it didn’t move it very far.

My next step is to modify my plan based on these outcomes.  I am going to purchase much thinner music wire to use as my spring.  I am also going to break the muscle wire down into smaller length attached to each segment of the spring, as opposed to one continuous piece.  I think this will help me to maximize the movement potential of the Flexinol.  Also, this will potentially give me more control options over the final movement effect.