6. 3D Scanning and printing¶
Group Assignment - Overhang and Surface Finish¶
To start the week off we decided on who would do which characteristic tests through Slack
I chose the overhang and surface finish tests.
I downloaded Ultimaker Cura in order to configure, slice, and produce the necessary gcode as I was planning to use the Ultimaker machines.
Set the correct machine I was planning to use (Ultimaker 3E and 2+), the material type, then inserted my part into the program.
Generated the slice then loaded it onto a removable dongle which I then plugged into the machines.
On the machine I first used the Move option in order to ensure the material was flowing properly
after that I went into Print and selected my part.
It would take a while for the print bed to heat up but it was a necessary step to ensure adhesion. I would stay until I ensured that the first few layers were printing as expected, after that I would be free to leave the machine to do it’s thing.
Surface finish¶
To test this property I decided to do 2 prints using different layer heights one in 0.2 and the other 0.1 following the process described above.
My first number of prints all failed, first from a communication error with the print head
and then twice from the part not properly sticking to the base.
After getting the same mangled result on two machines I went back into Cura and produced a new file which seemed to work just fine.
The two finished prints.
As can be seen the 0.1 layer height produced a much better surface but took more than twice the amount of time to print. Obviously, there’s a balance to be made here.
Overhang¶
For this I used a 0.2 layer height for both prints, but one was done with supports and the other without to compare.
Prints went by smoothly
As can be seen an intense overhang angle like this can’t be printed properly without supports.
Individual Assignment¶
Pen Grip¶
For this week’s group assignment I decided on creating something practical that I might use. I often use digitizer pens for various applications and while the Apple Pencil (AP) is a very nice piece of consumer technology it was not designed for human hands to grip onto properly. I’ve had trouble with tendonitis a few years back and attempting to use something like the AP for any kind of lengthy session quickly turns into a painful affair. Opposed to that, many pens I find myself using for hours on end just fine, to somewhat remedy the issue I turned to creating a formed grip that allows me to hold it wider, and with a trumpeted part that would allow me to push down on the pend without gripping it harder. I imported a mesh of the AP into Fusion, took measurements in the program and with my own pen, then modeled the grip using circles, paths, and lofts. Ensuring paths are continuous.
To fulfill the requirement of nesting I added space for some circuitry within the holder, the area is small so the intent is to just have an electrical contact inside and when the button is pushed down it grounds the circuit telling it that it was pushed… Of course I don’t particularly know how to make a circuit like that, but the nested gap was created regardless.
I first did 2 prints with different layer heights by splitting the tube of the part right down the middle, the one with 0.1 layer height failed. As it turns out this was the same one that was giving me trouble earlier.
The 0.2 print turned out fine, took some sanding to get everything to fit nicely but as it turns out it wasn’t fitting nicely over the pen even after some sanding.
I decided to redo the print, but print it whole at the suggestion of Hashem.
My first attempt did not work which should have been obvious in hindsight.
My 2nd attempt was to print the pen vertically with the flat end at the bottom, this part is still printing and the repo will be updated when I have it.
Photogrammetry¶
For the 3D scanning portion of this assignment I decided to try out photogrammetry using Meshroom.
I chose an object that is detailed and matte, then tried to find a good location to take pictures of it. I printed a striped pattern since apparently that helps the program understand the object
Unfortunately after hours of processing the result was not usable, reading the Warnings in the log I am still unable to understand what the issue was exactly since I have never used this sort of software before
