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3D Scanning and printing

"Memorable quote"

A Little introduction on the state of the world, our lab and myself.

Local notes

Henk reassures us that what we had to achieve this week was met; we milled and soldered a board. And that is great. What it does and why it is meant to look that way will become apparent in the coming weeks. When we design, make and to program the boards.

SainSmart Ender3D printer: http://wiki.sainsmart.com/index.php/101-91-311_Ender-3

Regional notes

Global notes

There are several labs in lockdown.

There will be a recitation on design on monday.

Todays reviews might be a bit boring, as we all make the same boards.

But the recitation will be very creative. So there is some compensation in there.

Inspirations from around the world

Lecture

There are many claims to be the inventor of 3D printing. But broadly we are adding

Why 3D print? - Complexity is essentially free. A complex thing takes as long to print as something easy. - You can print in - The material goes where you build; there is not much waste

What are reasons not to 3D print - There are constraints. - there is a resolution limit - it is slow, it is measured in hours or days - materials can be really expensive - the space of materials is limited. - There is a distinct subset of materials you can print. - there are environmental hazards to printing. check here for a paper on that - Anything else but PLA, you really need to ventilate. - List of materials in Prusa printers

Design rules

Neil made several testing objects to test like binding, overhang etc. We can use these to test the characteristics of our 3D printers

The angle seems to be one of the most important one. Bridging and angling together are a good design rule to make thing w/o support.

We need to first test the 3D printer. This will probably be my 3D printer!!! woohoo!

There is stuff called Smooth-On. You can post-process your stuff with it to make it smoother.

At Shapeways you can get a good overview of all the different ways to 3D-print.

STL: laser. - You can get as small parts as the laser. - it is a messy process

Fuse deposition molding. The type we use at home. - good structural process

Wire Additive. For metal printing - like the 3D bridge

Polyjet - it's like inkjet printing, but now it print polymer. It has a very high resolution. And you can print with multiple colors

Cut sheets - Laminated sheets of paper. - Looks great, but us very weak.

Selective laser sintering, used for laser printing - very complex and hazardous.

Other ways of printing are so complex and expensive that they are not interesting for fablabs.

Machines

RepRap: an open design of a printer make printer that could make other printers

Ultimaker; from the fablab in Utrecht; made an elephant

Prusa: made a great commercial business from the ultimaker but with an open design. You can use multiple colours and materials in a design

SainSmart is a fork of Prusa and they reduced the price enourmsely. Sindoh: everything is instrumented. It measures everything and are very user friendly.

Formlabs: started by students. Has a very high resolution. Chase me a 3D printed film.

And now we get slowly into the very expensive machines again...

There are also nice projects to recycle plastics and make filaments: precious plastics. https://www.onearmy.earth//

Filaments

  • Wood filaments: like processed wood.
  • Also think about food safety: most materials are not food safe.

File formats

STL Stereo Lithography Format: from Stratasus - It is great, it also works - it doesn't have units - it doesn't allow for multi material formats - binary (don't check in your STL files, they will be too big) - gltf: Neil is enthusiast about this one. It does a really good job for geometry, but also graphics.

Software

Meshing: read an STL file. (photoshop for meshes)

Slicing: Cura, IceSL etc. They slice, but they do also a goog path-planning and are smart. Puraslicer is a fork of Slic3r.

Printing: Interface to send a model to the printer. Ocotoprint can send to multiprinters.

Sharing: SketchFab let's you build 3D into sites. So this is a good way to put the 3D design on your page.

Scanning

It is exiting and frustrating. You get a point cloud which need a lot of extra work to make it work.