Week 5: 3D Scanning and printing
Assignment
Design and 3D print an object that could not be made subtractively. Scan an object using a 3D scanner.
Fab Academy Course details | Video of lecture
3D Design Approach
Design using Blender: I created a simple column with a base for stability and placed a spiral staircase into the centre of the object. The stair case was built using the bezier curve tools of blender coupled with the array feature - permitting objects to be replaced in a consistent and offset way.
The object was exported into .stl format from blender and then converted into GCode for an Ultimaker 2 and printed with red PLA. When exporting objects into .stl from Blender onlyt the SELECTED objects are exported.
![](images/week5/1.jpg)
Cylinder base
![](images/week5/2.jpg)
Finished staircase
![](images/week5/3.jpg)
Outer cylinder casing
![](images/week5/4.jpg)
Object in solid form
![](images/week5/5.jpg)
Export for Cura
![](images/week5/p4.jpg)
Printing
![](images/week5/p3.jpg)
Printing
![](images/week5/p2.jpg)
Printing
![](images/week5/p1.jpg)
Printing
![](images/week5/p0.jpg)
Finished!
3D Scanning Approach
Experimented with an old Kinect I bought from eBay for £15 and Skanect software which was free to use. Scanning our main Lab room resulted in some interesting outputs, resolution leaves a lot to be desired though.
Frame rate was a major issue on the Mac Book Pro I was using, not having enough GPU processing to capture images did impede progress. But I found the notion of being able to scan large areas very useful.
![](images/week5/s0.jpg)
The room
![](images/week5/s1.jpg)
Scanning the room
![](images/week5/s2.jpg)
Exported into Blender as a low resolution preview
![](images/week5/s3.jpg)
Wireframe view in Blender
![](images/week5/s4.jpg)
Exported into Blender as a low resolution preview