3D Printing

Design and 3D print an object (small, few cm)

To paraphrase Neil Gershenfeld, "this is probably what most people think this course is solely about". I agreed with his summary of 3D printers, that they are like Microwaves in a kitchen, they're not the answer to everything but are good at certain jobs. The more I learn on this course the more I think that CNC tools are truly the invaluable aid for the maker.

Bee Counter

Part of the intended functionality of my final project is to have a set of infrared light gates that could count bees entering and leaving the hive. I designed the walls in Sketchup and then printed it with the Makerbot 2.

Other ideas

Before printing the bee counter, I did some other designs of things that I would like to print one day. I have documented them below.

Voronoi Shark

Firstly I wanted to create a voronoi cage of something. I chose a shark because a) I've been reading a lot about fish recently and b) they have a very distinctive shape that would be easily recognisable if the overall shape was quite poor.

After hours, I will post a tutorial soon but in the meantime here are some useful links for acheiving the effect that I did.

Breaking Objects Cell Fracture Addon
SideFX Forum Post
VFX Voronoi Cage

Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing

Blender Tutorial 264 - Skin Modifier

Basically I make a basic cylinder and then extruded points in edit mode, followed by applying a 'skin' effect and smoothing it.

Unfortunately there were some open faces and the object would be too fragile to print on our powder scanners, although I think with some tweaking I could fix these issues.

iPhone Case with Telescopic Mount

In the spirit of improving something, as was suggested in the assignment brief, I took a 3D model of a standard iPhone 4S case from Thingiverse and then I modified it with Tinkercad so that it had 1.25inch telescopic mount. The monogram 'GL' is there because it's for my friend Gaz who is an avid fan of photographing the sky at night.

After doing this I realised I couldn't actually print it on the Replicator 2 yet, because it doesn't really have a flat face to stand on. The designs I had looked at for inspiration had been printed on the Strata which prints a disposable raft. I could print it on one of our resin printers but the case would be too brittle to flex when putting the iPhone inside it.

To get around this problem I am going to redesign the case so that it is in two parts. The case itself and the cylindrical mount, which will screw in, or snap together like this case on thingiverse