March 3
Week Four
This weeks assignment was aimed at getting us familiar with 3d design and printing. I am very new to this area and found it a little hard to get things done. I decided to design and print a funnel as a starting point for my 3d design and printing journey. This is the final print of the funnel I designed.
Starting was the hardest bit of this assignment. I have not had much interest in 3D design and printing before maybe due to my background.To get myself started, I looked for some tutorials for Rhinoceros 3d design suite and watched a few times to get acquainted with the interface and also learn how to do simple designs. When I was done with the tutorials I embarked on the designs of the funnel starting with the 2d design of the funnel.
After doing a few changes of the dimensions of the profile, I revolved the design to create a 3d design of the funnel as shown in the picture below.
This design was then saved as a .stl file which the makerbot's replicatorG application can read for g-code extraction and eventual printing. A picture of the preview of the funnel is shown below. I was now ready to print.
Now it was time to heat the 3d printer bed to the required tmperature. This took sometime but eventually the printer was ready to print the design. The process was captured in the video shown here.
When the printing was done, this is what I got. The funnel. I got the same feeling like the first time I blinked an led with a an MCU and this signifies an important step in my quest which just began.
