week 5, feb 20

weekly assignment: print in 3D a scanned object and a software designed object

the tools

hardware:
the printing will be done with our reprap printer.
for the scanning i will be using a small digital camera and a tripod.

software:
for the scanning i tested 123dcatch by autodesk and cubify.com, a web based (free) service

for design and editing i used blender and rhino

since i wanted to print human heads i also used SI facegen to create a human head with face of my son(!) and DAZ Studio 4 to attach the head to an avatar and export to OBJ

for the mesh editing and prepartion for printing: Meshlab and netfabb.com another free web service that repairs STL files on the cloud.

the translation to g-code was dobe with slic3r

scanning

i tried scanning different texture object, like a stuffed dog doll, an orange and a little laughing buddha: larger image
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i read that very reflective surfaces were problematic for the scanning reconstructin algorithms, and someone suggested applying some powder over the object, so here you can see a laughing powdered buddha: larger image

for the buddha photos i used a tripod: larger image

using Cubify

for the object reconstruction i tried both 123d catch and cubify
cubify resulted in a total dissapointment, as far as i was concerned.
no matter how many photos you give it, a few like 20, more like 40 or a lot like 60
i never managed to get a successful result.
it eithers stops responding after uploading the last picture (!!!), or it aknowledges the upload to later send you a failure notification without no exlpanation besides sending you to their tips section.
i even got an email telling me the scan was processed, but i wasn't able to find it in their site.
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using 123d Catch

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sculpting the head with FaceGen

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attaching the head to the body with DAZ studio 4

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editing in blender

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exporting to STL and preparing the file for printing

the file was checked for errors and converted to g-code using Meshlabs, netfabb.com and finaly slic3r
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printing

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after printing i found a program that allows you to preview the gcode in 3D, even allows you to do an animation of the printing. the tool is called PARAVIEW which opens VTK files, so you also need to google for a VTK2GCODE importer. here are some pictures of the results:
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