Ludwig Wilhelm Wall
PhD. graduated from UWaterloo.
I completed my PhD working with Daniel Vogel and Oliver Schneider. My work focused on Intermittent Interaction in personal fabrication, which keeps the human in the loop to make better things and make things better. My research improves the sustainability of existing processes in fabrication, extends the range of outputs of unmodified machines, incorporates domain knowledge into systems, and helps to understand how users feel about brief manual interactions.

My further reasearch interests include AR/VR technologies and their social acceptability, as well as integrating machine learning and game design solutions into systems engineering.
Throughout my masters at Hasso Plattner Institute I contributed to six research projects at the chair of Patrick Baudisch on personal fabrication. Prior to my PhD I spent a year contributing to a personal fabrication spin-out out of Patrick Baudisch's group (kyub) and completed the Advanced Track of the School of Design Thinking.

References:
Daniel Vogel, Oliver Schneider, Patrick Baudisch, Alexandra Ion, Claudia Nicolai

FULL PAPER PUBLICATIONS AT CHI AND UIST

8.

Intermittent Interaction in Digital Fabrication:
User Perception of Periodic Intervention in
Semi-Automated Creation Tasks

Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, Oliver Schneider and Daniel Vogel.
In Proceedings of CHI '25 (Paper).
[BEST PAPER HONORABLE MENTION AWARD]
Intermittent Interaction is a turn-taking approach used to interact with fabrication devices to do something that otherwise would be impractical or impossible for the machine. We contribute evidence that intermittent interaction is generally acceptable for creation tasks and practical guidelines for integrating intermittent interactions into semi-automated fabrication systems.
Paper | Details | Video

7.

Substiports:
User-Inserted Ad Hoc Objects as Reusable
Structural Support for Unmodified FDM 3D Printers

Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, Oliver Schneider and Daniel Vogel.
In Proceedings of UIST '23 (Paper).
Substiports makes unmodified FDM 3D printers more sustainable by replacing printed supports with scrap, LEGO, or customizable mechanisms, like a screw jack. Users place the ad-hoc objects, which snap securely into place in 3D printed holders. Our software-only solution integrates directly into the slicer, making it compatible with other support reduction efforts.
Paper | Video Preview | Code

6.

Scrappy:
Using Scrap Material as Infill to Make
Fabrication More Sustainable

Scrappy empowers consumer FDM 3D printers with the ability to save internal support material by replacing it with scrap. The system identifies worthwhile scrap inclusions, helps maintaining a library of available scrap and assists the user in the manual insertion of the scrap during the 3D printing process.
Paper | Video Preview | Code

5.

Kyub:
A 3D Editor for Modeling Sturdy Laser-Cut Objects

Kyub makes laser cut fabrication portable by enabling designing 3D objects directly in a 3D environment. The kyub model is a true three dimensional representation of the object and can be exported with all adaptations that are necessary to fabricate it on a specific machine. The physics-enabled design engine is intuitive to learn and simplifies creating inherently sturdy structures.
Paper | Video

4.

Digital Mechanical Metamaterials:
Integrating simple computation into 3D printed
objects’ cell structure

We explore how to embody mechanical computation into 3D printed objects, i.e., without electronic sensors, actuators, or controllers typically used for this purpose.
A key benefit of this approach is that the resulting objects can be 3D printed in one piece and thus do not require assembly. [...]
Paper (8.3MB) | Video

3.

TrussFab:
Fabricating Sturdy Large-Scale Structures on
Desktop 3D Printers

Robert Kovacs, Anna Seufert, Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, Hsiang-Ting Chen, Florian Meinel, Willi Müller, Si-jing You, Maximilian Brehm, Jonathan Striebel, Yannis Kommana, Alexander Popiak, Thomas Bläsius, and Patrick Baudisch
In Proceedings of CHI '17 (Paper).
TrussFab achieves large scale structures by complementing 3D print with plastic bottles. It does not use these bottles as “bricks” though, but as beams that form structurally sound node-link structures, also known as trusses, allowing it to handle the forces resulting from scale and load. [...]
Paper | Video

2.

Metamaterial Mechanisms:
Creating Complex Mechanisms within a
Single Piece of Material

Alexandra Ion, Johannes Frohnhofen, Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, Robert Kovacs, Mirela Alistar, Jack Lindsay, Pedro Lopes, Hsiang-Ting Chen, and Patrick Baudisch
In Proceedings of UIST '16 (Paper).
[BEST PAPER HONORABLE MENTION AWARD]
Our metamaterial mechanisms consist of a single block of material the cells of which play together in a well-defined way in order to achieve macroscopic movement. Our metamaterial door latch, for example, transforms the rotary movement of its handle into a linear motion of the latch. [...]
Paper | Video

1.

LaserStacker:
Fabricating 3D Objects by Laser Cutting and Welding

The key idea of LaserStacking is to use the laser cutter to not only cut but also to weld. Users place not one acrylic sheet, but a stack of acrylic sheets into their cutter. In a single process, LaserStacker cuts each individual layer to shape (through all layers above it), welds layers by melting material at their interface, and heals undesired cuts in higher layers. When users take out the object from the laser cutter, it is already assembled. [...]
Paper | Video | 3ders | hackaday


Short papers

1.

-1D Fabrication:
Investigating Decoupling Dimensions of Fabrication Output and Fabrication Machine Size

Ludwig Wilhelm Wall.
In Proceedings of TEI '22 (Student Design Competition).
[BEST MECHANICAL PROTOTYPE AWARD]
True personal fabrication will happen in the living room, rather than in the workshop. To promote such a future, Minus 1D Fabrication introduces a design principle that reduces the dimensionality of consumer fabrication machines, increases their portability, and makes them visually more attractive.
Paper  | Video 



Master Thesis at Hasso Plattner Institute

Design and Synthesis of Digital Mechanical Metamaterials

This master thesis presents a software system that allows users to design and fabricate simple interactive objects with integrated digital mechanical metamaterials. Its main component is a custom voxel editor for modeling 3D objects, routing signals through them, and verifying the correctness of "circuitry" by simulating the signal flow. Additionally, the editor automatically synthesizes and minimizes cell patterns that implement user-defined logic functions, supports layouting through automatic pathfinding as well as free-form path drawing and exports 3D-printable files.
 PDF (15.9MB)

Fab-related projects

Interactive Art: The Light Within

This entropic human-sized mirror made from nearly 2000 uniquely adressed LED's is crafted and fabricated to withstand both the elements and crowds. The embedded software is designed for resilience and to achieve real-time interactions on extremely limited hardware.
Details: UWaterloo Article  |  Exposition: Lumière   |  Exposition: Lumen

Webshop: Silberschmiede
Handmade or computer-aided gaming supplies and jewelry (Currently inactive)

CAD helps me create gaming supplies fit for everybody through customization.
I also create thoughtfully handmade jewelry, often elegant, sometimes geeky.
Etsy: Silberschmiede

Miscellaneous
- Text to Braille STL: A simple webservice that assists in 3D printing braille text pages and signs.
- Did you know? This happened... years ago!: A simple webservice that mines DBPedia for events that happened some years ago today.
- Leisure time photography gallery.


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