How to make (almost) anything

by Gabriella Gardosi (Gaia Gaoi)


3D Scanning and Printing

The Material

Studying the Material- triangular mesh

Studying the Material

First thing I study the materials of the 3D printers, the patterns that are possible. If I export a file made in a 3D program like Blender, Rhino or SketchUp it will create a triangular mesh i.e. the surface will be made up of triangles, as you can see in the first image.



3D Modelling

I went to see some friends last week and there just so happened to be someone making a clay head of his model.... I asked the sculptor.. "How do you do it? How do you think in 3D?" He told me "If you want to think in 3D, best with your hands. So I bought some clay, and started to do some maquettes. Interestingly with a clay head model it is surprisingly easy with two dextrous hands working in symmetry. I have not found a machine that works like that yet.

3D modelling the classical way, using clay. Artist on the left and model on the right

I bought some clay and started doing my own clay modelling.

Manual modelling


Recreating my clay model in blender using the Sculpt tool in Sculpt mode

Preparing the 3D Object for Printing

Gif to Stl

As I have quite a few gifs already I really want to convert one of them into a 3D file. So I downloaded Fab Modules I had first mistakenly downloaded the web version and then when trying to run Fab modules kept getting Error missing ws. Ws for Web Server because it was the web based version.

The gif to stl function was only available on the commandline. N.B Use gif_stl NOT make_gif_stl command ( for some reason there are two but only one works.)
This is what I did on the command line:

$ gif_stl ~/Desktop/PLT.gif ~/Desktop/PLT.stl
command input.gif output.stl

For the command to work well I make sure:

Converting to 1 bit images in Gimp

I could not figure out how to make batch edits to all the photos in my gif... so I changed the images one by one. Afterwards we found the plug-in Bimp to do batch manipulations

Wish I knew about this before- Plug-in for Gimp to do batch edits




Input gif to convert to stl in Fab Modules 1024 x 768 pixels


stl file in blender- Way too many vertices

I successfully converted the gif to stl and imported into Blender. However there were way too many vertices making it virtully impossible to work with it on my laptop as it slowed my whole system down. In order to create less vertices I reduced the number of pixels of my input gif. Instead of a gif of 1024 x 768 pixels, I reduced the size to 100 x 75 pixels.

less vertices stl from gif

Once I had my stl file I had to make sure that the object (or objects in my case) were solid because 3D printers cannot print faces they can only print volumes

How to make sure objects have no open faces using Non- Manifold in Edit Mode selecting only vertices- Highlights in Orange are problem areas

Once I had the problem areas located I had to solve them. This involved deleted faces and/or creating new faces:

Selecting vertices to make faces

Once I had my objects solved I thought it would be too complicated to print on the 3D printer. So instead I want to make this objects negative space and cut it out of a cube. To do this I need to use the Boolean Difference Modifier.

Making a Boolean difference in Blender

How to make a Boolean Difference in Blender:

I tried to print this but the negative space inside the cube could not be seen by the 3D printer programs. I tried in Cura and Makerbot and it appears they do not see the negative space inside of a closed form. Still you can download my impossible 3D print form here

3D Scanning

3D scan using the Roland

Turns out the Roland is a pretty useful machine. We changed the head so that it now carries a needle with a piezo crystal which is very sensitive. The needle lowers and upon contact with an object records the vector point.

stl file from 3D scan using the Roland


The points that make up the mesh made by the scanner, you can also see the bottom is open

Unfortunately I did not have time to scan the whole object so instead I made a Boolean Union to add my scanned object in relief to a cube which could then be printed

Boolean Union

The 3D scan file can be downloaded here


3D Print Take 2

After failing to design something that can be recognized for 3D printing, I started again, this time taking the same form I used in Computer- Controlled Cutting. I designed a modular piece that can be fit into itself in Solidworks. I live very much how solidworks thinks, and would like to continue using this 3D program more in the future.



I used the makerbot to print out the pieces in green PLA. My first iteration had many holes and cyclinders (alike to lego), making it hard for them to fit into each other. I redesigned the piece to have just one hole and cylinder for each joint, for better fitting.

My lego piece can be downloaded here