6. 3D Scanning and printing¶
This week is about 3D printing and scanning. The first part is about 3D printing, I will do some tests to find the design parameters for 3d printing manufacturing. in the second part, I will be designing and printing a part using 3d printing. and finally, I will be 3D scanning an object.
Testing 3D printer¶
I will be using Ultimaker 5S 3D printer for this week’s assignment, to find out the design parameters I started with a rough benchmark print with the standard printing configuration.
Since I am using an Ultimaker I decided to use their slicer Ultimaker Cura. Cura has premade printing settings that get good results without even knowing much about them.
I printed my benchmark test in the engineering profile which supposes to give the printed part the best structure and strength, and I also picked a layer height of 1.5mm to test the print at its faster-based printing settings.
for refrance, the printing time in a layer height of 1mm is around 12 hours, while in the 1.5mm height is 8 hours.
The Print result¶
The test print turned out great in general, the printer was able to build in an angle of 45 with a great finish and up to 80 in a poor one. regarding printing bridges without support it was able to print up to 15mm without stringing and reached 25mm with minimal stringing.
Design and manufacturing¶
Concept¶
I will be designing and manufacturing a push-button for a lock door project, It will consist of two parts, one to be mounted and the second to cover the screws.
The top cover will have a flexure part that can be pushed. I will Add pieces of copper tape to the inside and solder them to wires so when someone pushes the button it will create a short circuit.
3D Design¶
I made sure the design is parametric in case I needed it for other projects.
Here I’m trying to show the sliding mechanism since it’s a 45 it would be easy for a 3d printer, the contact width is about 1mm, and it’s enough to hold the two pieces in place firmly.
click here to download the design files.¶
Manufacturing¶
slicing¶
I start with the base, it was fairly simple to slice, the walls of the structure are designed to be exactly as the printing wall thickness, so infill was not needed. and the small sliding angle is at 45 degrees which can be easily printed without support.
After that I moved to the cover, it needed some support for the part that the wires come in from, I made the support line distance to 10mm which is within the printer capabilities as shown in the bridge-building test.
And I kept the support above 60 degrees so that the sliding part won’t build any support.
Parts After printing¶
The base printing results.
The cover printing results.
Add Copper and Wires¶
final results¶
3D Scanning¶
I will be scanning a vice using peel 2 3D scanner.
A scanner goes beyond its specs sheet, the peel 3d scanner has an easy to use software, with mesh editing capabilities.
Here is a video from peel 3D explaining how to use the software, and how the scanning process goes.
and here is a video explaining how to edit the mesh.
The vice was scanned from all sides, once I finish a side I delete all the extra things that were scanning (table or anything picked up in mistake), flip the part, and continue scanning, the scanning targets help the software to continue building on the previous scan.
then I can create a mesh from the scanned object, from the mesh editing workplace I can patch holes, smooth the surface and remove spikes.
then I can export it in one of the following file formats.
