This weeks assignment is existing out of 3D scanning and printing.

Im on totaly new ground now. But we go for it.

We started with scanning in a duck, so that I would see how it works. You basicly put the duck in front of the lazer on a statue. If you are just putting it on the lower platform, you don't have the bottom of the duck in the scan. We scanned the duck 10 times and got a beautifull result on the computer. It became quite fast clear to me that if you want to scan something, the upperside is not scanned with. But that can be fixed in the computer. This scan was done on the "Nextengine Desktop 3D scanner model 2020i"

duck

We also used another way to scan something in. Some time ago we got some chess pieces from a client here. One of them was broken. Because the horse in the game is so detailed, we decided to put this piece in the 'Roland modela' scanner. The same machine as was used last week for the circuit boards. This machine is much more detailed than the other two.

repair old and new

As last 'scan' we have the program 123D(app). On thursdays we have some kids from the elementary school comming over. We decided that they could help us with the 3D. We used two camera's and two students. The first camera is an Sony SLT A55 (on manual mode), the second one was a 100GoPro camera. I wasn't happy with any of the results. Both times the background was to much in the capture. So I retried Pitty enough witht he same result.

You don't see much on the picture underneeth, but to the other side it shows perfectly the upper circle. When you work with 123D you make 3 circles around your subject. One - in my case- in hip hight, the second at the same hight of your subject. And the last circle goes above the subject. so you have the subject from under eyehight and from above.

123D elementary school

As printing assignment I decided to go to my interests. In Belgium I used to swordfight in a Gild, called 'Hallebardiers', active since 1444. So I went sitting behind my laptop, with all the currage I have to defeat Blender. Everybody is always so full of good comments about it, but to me it looked like the most difficult program ever. I didn't find anyting back in it. But I said to myself that if I would be able to make atleast 1 (one) thing in Blender, I'dd be proud on myself. And so I did. With the help of youtube. I made a sword. A one-hander with maybe a to long blade. But that doesn't matter for now.

blender

blender finished

Like I said I made it in blender but then I had to save it in .slt. So I needed to export the file. First it went wrong; I could see that the file wasn't heavy enough.But after the second time it all went ok. So I moved to the 3D printer and started playing with the program. I scaled the sword from 1.0 to 2.0. It took around 20 minutes to print out the whole sword. The handle looks really good, just like I wanted it, but the blade disapointed me. Though, I have to admit, the 3D printer did his best and even tried to make the blood grove.

sword sword finished

sword

If there is anything I learned so far, it's that you CAN work in blender, though it asks alot of time to learn it and nerves of steel. And that 3D printers and details/fine things don't go toghether. So, let's make someting more massive now, like an elephant.

I didn't design the elephant, but I scanned it in, scaled it and printed it out. And why that elephant? My classmates in Belgium gave it to me my last schoolday with them. so I'm keeping the flufy one and I'll send the printed one back to Belgium.

Even though they told me to put marks on the elephant I didn't really wanted to listen. I tought the coulors and shape would be ok for the scanner to recognise where he had to put everything. I should have listend to more experienced people. After a few layers (I've put it on 8) you could see that there were 3 elephants on the computerscreen. I stoped the scan and started putting vynil all over the elephant. We keep small parts from the vynil cutter here for small projects or for kids. So after a few minutes the elephant wasn't just purple anymore, but purple full with stripes of vynil in all the colours that we have. elephant