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5. 3D Scanning and printing

Assignments in this week

Group Assignment:
- [X]Test the design rules for your 3D printers

Individual assignment:
- [X] Design and 3D print an object(small, few cm3, limited by printer time) that coundl not be amade subtractively
- [X] 3D scan an object(and optionally print it)

Group Assignment

Test the 3D printers

Learn about our 3D printers

  • Tools
    I have experience using 3D printers before, so I am going to use some new machines in this course. It happened that in our office, a colleague bought a new 3D printer, and I decided to try it out again.

  • Babulab A1 3D Printer
    This 3D printer have lots of automation setting funtion which is very user-freindly.

    1. Install the software and apps.
    1. Set the 3D printer parameters.
      3D printer Model >> Plate Types >> Filament Selection.
    1. Set the printing parameters.
  • Quality: Its normally determined by the 3D printers.Layber height will determined the quality of the printing. The Initial layer height will determined the printing stability.
  • Stregth: By adjusting the sparse infill density can determined how much materials we will cost and how much time we will need to print it. Meanwhile, the sparse infill patterns will indluence the printing efficiency.
  • Sparse infill Pattern have lots of selection. Wall loops will determind the thickness of the surfaces.
  • Sparse infill density: 10% >> 25% >> 50% >> 100%
  • Ailament consumption: 3.81m(11.55g) >> 4.11m(12.76g) >> 4.86m(14.73g) >> 6.32m(19.16g)
  • Time consumption: 51m6s >> 52m16s >> 53m52s >> 52m16s
  • Support: Support is normaly used for some printing area when there is no holding parts. To dissemble the support parts easily, I can choose diffrent support type such as normaly or tree size and the threshold angle.
    On the other hands, the support will also cost more time and more prining materials.

  • Quality >> Stregth >> Support >> Others

3D Printing Prctice

Testing the 3D Printer

It was my first time using this new 3D printer. When I put it on to test the print file, everything seemed normal until finally due to a problem with setting the infill percentage, one of the angles of the model was being printed without support from the nozzle. It broke, resulting in the final print result as shown in the photo below.


Practicing on 3D Printer

3D Stand Design for my final project
During the actual design of 3D printing, I mainly designed a base for the final project. Because my final design is a component that can support a rotating plane. I need to design a bracket that is not vertical, but a base with a 25-degree inclination angle to the proof, and 4 fixed oblique openings on the front of the base. So I used 3D printing to process my base.
Step1: I drawed a cube as 65 mm * 65mm，then make it into 5mm thickness as the basic platform.
Step2: I seletected the front side and make the upder stand as a 25degree angle.
Step3: Adjust some right-angle parts to a radius of 15mm, especially make arc supports on the supporting parts to increase the stability of the base.
Step4: Four circular holes with a diameter of 3 mm were made by extrusion cutting.
Issues: Becuase I was set the support in this 3D printing. It makes the 4 holes is not easy to clean.
At the beginning, I designed four M3 holes with 25-degree angles. I’m afraid it will affect the printing result so I added the support. Finally, It proved that it was a mistake when I printed my bench to use the support setting. So it left me the extra work to remove the support inside of the four holes.

3D Design Stand STL File

Other practices on 3D printer









3D Scanning

It‘s my fisrt time to learn the 3D Scanning. Because we do not have 3D scanner in our lab. At first, I try to use my IPhone to make this..However, it seems all sofrtware it not for free and some of them are not available in China market. So I trun to learn the Luma AI.
At first, I tried to take videos and photos of a small doll at home and uploaded them respectively. However, due to modeling errors and problems with the lighting and angle of the shooting material, I could not upload it successfully. Finally, I looked for it during the day. A bright room, re-photographed and got the following two results.

1. Videos to 3D Module.

I shot a 360-degree video, but because it was handheld, there was some jitter in the lens and the result was not particularly good.

2. Images to 3D Module.

After taking the video, I took 360-degree detailed photos again. Since the photo format output by my iPhone is HEIC, I still used a format converter to convert the photos into JPG format before uploading them to Luma AI for model building.

3. Export & Printing 3D module to OBJ/STL

After comparison, I found that the 3D model generated by the picture is better than the model generated by the video. Finally, I selected the output file format OBJ in the software, then opened the model on my 3D printer to view it, and found that the degree of restoration of the details of the actual object was relatively high.