3D Printing my Ball Joint Doll Robot

The process to 3D print my doll parts was very simple. I loaded each body part file into the Bambu Slicer by pressing the Add cube. I oriented all the parts into thier printing position. For most of the parts, that was their largest flat part down.



I used the standard printing settings in Bambu Studio and turned on both Tree supports and Brims. The tree supports is helpful for my parts like the body to help with the arm holes and additional stability. The brim is important for all of my small parts. Many of those parts do not have a lot of material touching the bed, so the brim will help keep them stable. For extra stability, I doubled the brim from the standard 5mm to 10mm and used the inner and outter option. These support options added additional print time, but was well worth it to have a successful print.



Once the prints were completed, I removed them from the print bed and popped off the supports and brim.

Version 2 Updates

Modifying the Chest

I wasn’t sure if the channels in the body would be enough to count for this week's individual task. I showed my completed print to two of my labs Fab instructors, David Taylor and Garrett Nelson, and they both said maybe but weren’t sure. One of my instructors, Garrett, suggested I create a more advanced part for my robot body. We sat down and brainstormed some ideas and came up with a movable heart inside the chest cavity.

That evening, I went back to my blender file and began working on creating the new chest piece. Since the heart would need more space, I had to extend the chest piece down and shorten the middle piece.







While I was back in my file, I also updated the part of the arm where the shoulder meets the upper arm. On the 3D printed model, that piece being two flats against each other tends to slip around. So in version two I added a peg and slot to those two pieces.



This allows them to still have the rotation but without the slipping.

Version 3 Updates

Embedding Magnets in the Hands and Feet

I had a chance to work on updating my hands with the holes for the magnets to be inserted. Since I was not at my home computer, I did not have access to my full blender file but I did have the basic hand piece in my TinkerCAD account. I had to make some minor modifications to the file since I had made updates in blender, but it was helpful since I had the measurements I needed. I created a hole cavity in the hand piece to fit the magnet and slightly increased the cylinder part of the hand to adjust for the height of the magnet hole cavity. I then created the first robot hand attachment which was a simple robot claw measured with a cutout to be able to fit around a standard pencil.

For embedding the magnets into the print, I had to add a pause at layer 16 in Bambu Studio. Something important to note is that Bambu Studio performs the pause at the START of the layer, not the end. Technically layer 16 is where the printer will cover the hole, but since the pause is at the start I can drop in the magnets and when the print continues it will cover the magnet.



One annoyance I had while doing the magnets, is that I kept getting my polarity mixed once I dropped it into the paused print. I kept having to take them out and recheck that I have them in the print the correct way. After a few annoying attempts, I had the bright idea to grab a sharpie and put a dot to represent facing up for each magnet.



I am a bit disappointed in the strength of the magnets after they were embedded in the print. There are only 3 layers on each print covering the magnets, so a total of 6 layers in between the magnets. On their own the magnets are very strong and even a little difficult to separate from the stack, but once they were in the prints the magnetic field felt really weak and while it does the hand attachment it doesn't take any force to knock it off.

3D Scanning

3D Scanning and Printing

For 3D scanning, I tried to use the PolyCAM scanner app on my Samsung Galaxy S24 phone. I was able to download the app and create a free account which should have given me a few free scans, but the app would crash every time I tried to exit the sign up for a plan pop up page. I tried a few times with no luck. One of my group mates offered to let me use their phone to take my scan. I accepted, but in the end did not end up using their phone.

While waiting for my turn to use their phone I downloaded a couple more apps from the app store to test out. The first one I downloaded ended up being a bit misleading in the name and description, because it ended up being a 360 degree video recorder and not a 3D scanner like the description said. It is possible that the app did have 3D scanning functionality, but it wanted me to set up a paid account for most of the features and the only free feature gave me 3 scans to create a “360 video and model.” The video part did sort of work, but I was never able to get a model from that app.

I looked through this week's page for app suggestions and researched the ones listed and settled on trying Kiri next. Kiri was an open source 3D scanning app and according to the site was free for unlimited 3D scans.

I went into the app expecting a pop up to buy a subscription like all the rest, and there was one but it also did give a free unlimited 3D scan option. The free scan option had some limitations on quality settings and features, but my first scan with the app worked great!

I found a little paper crane on the desk that a student left behind and I scanned the crane.



Within a few minutes the scan was turned into a decently accurate 3D model. It sent me the file download link via email within about 2 minutes and I was able to bring the file directly into Bambu studio and send it to the printer.

It did have some parts that were thin and ended up missing in the prints, but overall I was happy with the app and print considering I did not do additional work to fix the mesh.

Trying AI Model Generators

For this activity, I tested three different AI to 3D model services to see how well they generate meshes for 3D printing. While evaluating the three services, I looked at the cost of generating the models, the cost of exporting/downloading the model, and the quality of the model.

I used the same prompt for all three services.

Prompt:

"Can you create me an anthropomorphic wizard cat in purples and pinks. The cat should be holding a magic book in one hand and casting a spell in the other.""

Week 5 Files

In my repo is a zip folder containing files for my week 5.