Week 5: 3D Printing and Scanning¶ ¶ • Test the design rules for your 3D printer(s) • Design and 3D print an object (small, few cm^3, limited by printer time) that could not be made subtractively • 3D scan an object (and optionally print it) • Learn about technologies that focus on (dis)ability I Have Followed certain Priciples, In the 1st Week of FABLAB¶ • PLA (Plant source generated) is considered the best material for 3D printing • There are limitations of 3D printing: o There are certain design rules to follow o Confusing – it’s always better to not have “support” o It’d be better to use “bridging” o Things to consider – angle of the print? o There could be differences between what you actually get for the inner dimension and the outer dimension and what you thought you’d get. • Characterize the design rules of your 3D printer, and reference to them during the design process • STL == stereolithgraphy (file format) o A list of triangles o Bad format o Easy format • 3D printing is good due to: color, geometry, and assembly • Not just printing horizontally, G-Code allows the printer to print in all three axis • “Studio Culture” o Give, Help, Credit o Spiral model – safety o Iteration – keep testing • 3D Scanning o Software: Meshlab(Mac), NetFebb(not for Mac) o Hardware/scanning-camera: Capture • “Throughput” • “Critical Path” – important to ask what the bottlenecks are, in order to minimize the time it takes for me to finish the task that takes the longest in the design process (e.g. testing, printing, update, etc.) 5.1. Design:¶ I designed an elf crown which is a possible design for the crown with embedded brainwave sensors for my final project. The pictures are listed in chronological order. In the process of working on Fusion 360, I was greatly aided by a youtube video “Design a Wonder Woman Tiara in 5 minutes with Fusion 360 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9bYTeK1fvg )”, as well as my classmates and the instructor. 5.2. Test:¶ I saved two g-code files: one for a full-size crown, and the other a half-size crown. In short, the design for the half size crown did not work, and the reasons are listed in bullet points below, along with two screenshots of the g-code visualization and the actual print. • The thickness of the initial full-size crown is 2 mm. As I shrink the size to half, the thickness (of the lines of the crown) became around or less than 0.5 mm. • When I asked Craig about it, constantly interrupting him while he was working on other things, he told me that the nozzle that extrudes the plastic in our 3D printer (Model: SD 200) has a size of 0.4 or 0.5 mm. Therefore, the nozzle will not extrude the plastic lines that has a thickness of less than 0.5 mm well. • I have learnt it by seeing the actual mess. About “support” in 3d printing: • In the 3d printing software, “3DWOX”, “the advanced setting” should be used in order to make the effective and stable “support” that actually supports the object that is about to be printed. • Photos that show my work on “support” in 3d printing: In the final print, everything went great, but I was left with a question why the left and right sides of the crown have its shapes changed. Why are the design shown in the g-code and the actual print different, in detail? The related images with annotation are shown below: 5.3. 3D Print:¶ This section briefly, visually shows the workflow of 3d printing after designing. 5.4. 3D Scan:¶ For 3d scanning, we used MeshLab(software) and Capture(hardware/scanning-camera). At first, I scanned eyeglasses, and in short, it did not work. The scanner did not recognize the glasses as an object. Before I started scanning, Craig told me that I would quickly find out that 3d-scanning glasses does not work so well. I scanned it anyway because I wanted to document all my learning process. 5.5. Technologies that focus on (dis)ability:¶