3D Printing and Scanning
Group Work
For this week’s assignment we had to design and 3d print a model that can’t be manufactured subtractively or in any other CNC machine.
During the internship period in FabLab, I tried to design and print a small planter to use it as mold to produce concrete planters, the most important section in this design was the hinge that should connect the parts of the mold together, so I was testing it. And the result went great after the second or third test, unfortunately I don’t have the designs now, but I have the final result after printing it.
So I decided to redesign the same project to also use it in the future molding week. Using SolidWorks I drew the mold as one part and split it using split tool, and the added the sliding hinges in the assembly to test the fit.
1. In the top plane, I drew a hexagon and extruded it with 20deg draft angle.
2. In the top face for the resulted geometry, I drew another hexagon with the same domentions but rotated 15deg, but this time I used cut extrud option with the same draft angle.
3.I made the resulted geometry shell, using the shell option in Solidworks.
4. On the top edge for the planter, I created a new sketch and drew the top projection for the supporting sides, and extruded it along the whole planter. And I mirrored it for the second side using the mid plane.
Mirror step.
5.The last step was split for the body to become two parts mold.
and this is the result.
For the sliding locks, I copied the same sketch from the sides in the planter part and past it in new part. Then I created an outline boarders and extruded it also along the length.
and then I added all parts to the assembly, and connected them with the appropriate mate types.
Then I saved the part in STL extension and export it to CURA to slice it for the printing purposes.
I used Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) .Ultimaker 2+ printer it has 223 mm × 223 mm × 205 mm dimensions, up to 20microns resolution, and 180°C - 260°C Operating nozzle temperature. And used PLA filament, it has melting point 215°C.
Using ULTIMAKER 2+ I printed the 4 parts , during the design process I was planning to print the four parts togather in one print as when they assembeld to prove the tolerances, but in some how I forget to do that and printed them seperatly!!.
To balance between the print speed and the quality of the result, I used the 0.15 mm for the layer height. As this value goes smaller; the print time became longer and the quality better.
and since the shell thickness was 2mm, I used 0.8mm wall thickness for the print. This means that I have 2 outer walls and the infill between them.
The speed was 60 mm/s, the infill density was 10% to reduce the print time. And I didn’t use any support for the print since all overhang angles are much less than 45deg.
finally, this is the final resulted parts.
Scanning
For this week also, we had to scan a 3d object and (optionally) print it. I decided to use our new Peel 3D scanner to make this assignment.
Since it’s a brand new device we opened it and followed a video tutorial to learn how to use it exactly, it’s an amazing device and have a great software "Peel 3D " to edit the mesh generated by the scanner.
The scanned object should be not shiny or reflective, I scanned my friend from the lab Isra’a. you can see the steps below.
You just have to focus on the distance between the scanner and the scanned object to be around 30 cm , the device gives you colors to help you remain in the right scope. and strat rotating around the object, you have to cover as much angles as possible to make the editing stage much easier.
In the image above you can see the resulted scan immediately after finishing, it’s a very good result and shows great details but needs some editing.
I converted it to a mesh so I could edit it and remove the holes or the excess materials from it, by right clicking on the resulted scan object on the left side panel. .
and filled the holes around her face and scarf, using the hole filling tool.
After filling the holes, I increased the spike level to 100, which is basically like a smart smooth option it cleans the mesh from all spikes and keeps all the details and the sharpness of the scan.
And this is the final result, I think it’s a great result for a beginner, and the most important she liked it too.
