BİLGİ Department of Architecture faculty member Prof. Tuğrul Yazar and graduate school alumnus Meryem Nurefşan Yabanigül’s project ‘Non-linear Hot Wire Cutter’ has been registered as a utility model

BİLGİ Department of Architecture faculty member Prof. Tuğrul Yazar and our History, Theory, and Criticism in Architecture Master’s Program alumnus Meryem Nurefşan Yabanigül’s ‘Non-linear Hot Wire Cutter’ project has been registered as a utility model by Turkish Patent and Trademark Office.

A tool used to cut materials such as polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyurethane, EPS, and XPS, hot wire cutter works by heating a conducting wire with a power source. Hot wire cutters often use wires made of nichrome or stainless steel for cutting and the thickness of the wire is determined in line with the size of the material to be cut, the energy of the power source, and the form of the product that one wishes to attain. Since the wire cannot take different forms when cut with thin wire, the variety of products in terms of their shapes are limited when cut in this way. When thick wires are used for cutting, the variety of the products increases since the wire can be given different shapes; however, as the wire thickens, one needs to use a power source with higher energy and this increases the cost of production.

Nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium, was used as the wire material in the invention. The position of the atoms in Nitinol alloy do not differ in hot and cold environments and the invention drew on that quality. The shape that is given to nitinol wire is memorized when it is subjected to high heat in a fixed position and later cooled abruptly. When the wire is reheated, it returns to its memorized shape. By drawing on this quality of nitinol wire, a cutting tool was designed that is both thin and can be given shape to. In this way, the goal is to decrease the production cost while preserving the formal variety of the products.

The invention was developed in master architect Meryem Nurefşan Yabanigül’s master thesis ‘Robotic Fabrication Workflow for Gyroid-like Structural Systems’ advised by Prof. Tuğrul Yazar in İstanbul Bilgi University Institute of Graduate Programs History, Theory, and Criticism in Architecture Master’s Program in 2019. In her thesis study, Yabanigül produced the Gyroid minimal surface with surfaces of double curvature that cannot be produced with standard wire cutters by using a non-linear thin hot wire cutter with the help of the robotic arm in the production laboratory of Faculty of Architecture.