Week 6: 3D Scanning and Printing

Objectives

Test the design rules for your 3D printer(s)

Design and Print 3D object that must be additive.

3D Scan an object and print it (optional)

Learning Outcome

Additive design

3D Printing and Scanning

Software (Cura) and Machines (Ultimaker)

First we did group assignment which was to test the design rules for 3D printer explained in portion of group assignment. Later I did my individual assignment which was to design and print any object which must be an additive design therefore I searched alot using google and fab academy search engine just to have idea of additive designs. I tried to design equation driven designs at first which is explained in an individual assignment section.

Group Assignment

What is 3D prinitng and Additive design?
3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The creation of a 3D printed object is achieved using additive processes. In an additive process an object is created by laying down successive layers of material until the object is created.
Each of these layers can be seen as a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object. 3D printing is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing which is cutting out / hollowing out a piece of metal or plastic with for instance a milling machine. 3D printing enables you to produce complex shapes using less material than traditional manufacturing methods.

Ultimakers we used for 3D printing at Fab Lab Khairpur

Extended and Extended 2+

Initially we considered two designs from thingivers for group assignment of which one is shown below. Later we opened one of the design in cura software and proceeded step by step. All of the steps are explained below.

Test card for group assignment

Steps for cura software

Open the Ultimaker Cura Software.

Open the .stl file.

Select your printer i-e ultimaker 2 and ultimaker 2 extended.

Adjust the scaling of your model if needed

Set the infill density as 20%

Adjust the printing speed as per required

Click on Generate the support , and set the support density equals to 5%.

Set the support placement structure to Touching Build plate

While making these settings keep noticing the required time for printing because it depends on these parameters.

Check once the Layer view just to check the number of required layers for understanding purpose

Save the file either on your PC or insert the SD card and save it directly in card.

The .gcode file is ready.

Test card in cura software
Test card during printing in Ultimakers Extended 2+
Test card after printing

Observations

Nut, Size M4 Nut should fit perfectly

Wave, rounded print

Star, Sharp Edges

Name, Complex Shapes

Holes, Size 3, 4, 5 mm

minimal Distance: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7 mm

Z height: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1 mm

Wall Thickness: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7 mm

Bridge Print: 2, 4, 8, 16 mm

Sphere, Rounded Print 4.8mm height

Sphere Mix, 7 mm height

Pyramide, 7 mm height

Overhang: 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70°

3D Print Font, optimized for 3D printing

Size, 100 x 100mm x 23.83 (10mm width)

Spike, minimum Layer Time, 21 mm height from Bottom (include Baseplate)

Hole in Wall, 4 mm diameter, check for proper print

Raft Test, raft should be just under the model

Retract Travel, check retract settings for longer travel

Individual Assignment

The First individual task was to design an additive design in software like solidworks to print in 3d printer. For that I tried to search different additive designs like interwined or interlocked objects in thingivers. Initially I tried to design equation driven objects like cool trefoil bracelets etc. The output is shown below in gif. Later I wanted to design a voronai design for example any sphere inside sphere or any animal like rabbit for that I found meshmixer software which should have ability of meshing at ease. I tried to design a voronai rabbit in meshmixer which looks like below under captioned image voronai rabbit..

Interlocked Trefoil Bracelet
Voronai Rabbit

Later I decide to make cool double mobius interwined bracelet in software solidworks which is explained step by step.

Step: 01 Choose front plane and create a circle with imaginary line crossing center of circle. The below image shows the drawn circle

Circle of 50 mm drawn on front plane

Step: 02 By using command trim entities cut the semi circle below the imaginary line.

Semi circle

Step: 03 Choose isometric mode then choose top plane and draw a simple line of 30mm beside circle and make it coincident to semi circle.

Semi circle with coincident line of 30mm in isometric mode.

Step: 04 Use surface sweep command and choose line as sketch one and semi circle as sketch two.

Surface sweep command

Step: 05 Use surface offset command and make thickness equal to 5mm.

Thicken (surface offset) command

Step: 06 Select top view and draw an ellipsoid and make it coincident to center with center to center distance of 50mm.

Face curves command

Step: 07 Use command curve driven pattern in order to draw 8 ellipsoid later use command cut exrude in order to cut across the shape.

Curve driven pattern command

Step: 08 Use command fillet to make six circles curvey.

Fillet command

Step: 09 Goto geometry plane and chose plane axis and choose top and front plane to have axis besides the drawn shape.

Image showing axis

Step: 10 Use command body move and copy the selected item with phase difference of 180 degrees. Later use command combine in order to combine the both objects together.

Body move command

Step: 11 Final Design ready to be exported as obj file for cura software.

Final Design

I repeated the above process of cura software in order to proceed for printing model.

Cura Software

Final Output is shown below after printing has finished.

Final Output

After spending 3 hours on removing support finally i got my bracelet as movable.

An Interwined Bracelet

The Second assignment was to scan any object and print it (optionally) so we had two choises of scanners one from sense and other from skinect. Furthermore we also used android app like scan 3d , an icon shown below, which was providing it's premium services against 600 hundred pakistani rupees therefore we tried it's normal quality and got fine results but was unable to export it as any form of image like png image. After that we tried sense 3D scanner in which we had very bad experience of scanning ourselves at first moments but with spanding few hours we became little bit experts and got good results. Many things matters in 3D scanning like colors, type of 3d scanning and definitely your experience of scanning. In order to have accurate and good results we introduced background color black and placed our sense scanner on camera stand just to have a accurate angle. After lots of tries we got fine results which can be seen below.

Scan 3D App icon

Sense Scanner we used for 3D Scanning

My self in rotation mode during scanning (Picture credit : Sir Engr. Sohail Soomro)
Zeeshan Ahmed's scanned body

Finally I used Skanect scanner for that it was mandatory to have some basic knowledge of skanect scanner so I watched few tutorials at first. In order to get scanned there are few steps which need to be followed.

Install the Skanect software that will be used for scanning i-e body or objects

Go to Prepare tab > Open a new File and make the settings as shown below.

Click on record and rotate until you come again on your original position.

Click on pause when the recording is completed.

Now click on reconstruct

Go to the next step > in the Process tab smooth the scanned object and fill the holes. Here you can observe the number of vertices and faces covered while scanning the object.

Click on share and choose the file format as .stl. Select the Object size in inches.

Save your file as .stl or obj format.

Skinect setup at Fab Khairpur
Zeeshan Ahmed's scanned body

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