Week 05: 3D Scanning and Printing

I have only started to 3D print this past year. Mr. Dubick convinced me of the user friendliness of the Bambu printers, and my kids really wanted one. It was a family gift from my mom for Christmas 2024. My son set it up right away, and started printing files from maker's space. I can't leave well enough alone, and taught myself how to edit objects on tinkercad. I have had more fun than my kids making things like:

Gringotts coins for a magical birthday. Since I made hundreds of these, I saved time by cutting the file that had printed vertically in half, and removing some of the middle. Then I printed each half flat on the bed, and glued them together afterwards.

A lock and key system so that the kids could access their personal bank vaults, but not each other's.

Caps to label my soap dispensers.

And lots of other fun projects.

Printing to a Bambu 3D Printer

Bambu studio: - Log in to Bambu studio using the G-mail icon at the bottom of the Log In screen!

• Open the .3mf or .stl file in bambu studio

• Make any alterations you need, cut, size, rotate, add supports.

• Slice plate: check time of print, and cost to make sure you are not printing something too big or too small

• Print plate

• Choose your printer, and make sure your printer plate is clean (wipe down with alcohol), the printer is plugged in, and your filament is loaded.

• Do not print remotely to the school lab, because you are not there to watch for failures, ask if others need it, or clean the bed before use

Class Notes:

week05 class notes It was interesting to hear in the lecture that the filament is a non-Newtonian fluid when heated. It made me wonder if we blast some low frequency music at it can we increase the bridge distance or the overhang?

Weekly Assignment:

Group assignment: - test the design rules for your 3D printer(s)

For the group assignment we all printed the same test file from our own printers, and 2 from the school lab. Then we all squinted, and bemoaned our poor eyesight as we compared the objects. Our results are on our group page. They all printed pretty well, with the X1Carbon being the best. The tests would have been more accurate if we all used the same filament. It is clear from the tests why Mr. Dubick insists on only using Bambu filament, as the Bambu filament prints were the only ones that didn't have stringing.

My filament had some stringing, which was likely caused by different heat properties of the PLA+ filament I was using.

Click here for our group page.

Individual Assignment

• design, document, and 3D print an object that could not be made subtractively (small, few cm3, limited by printer time)
• 3D scan an object (and optionally print it)

At first I was thinking of making a whistle, but then I was reminded of the simple ship print that comes preloaded on the Bambu printers, Benchy. So I decided to make a ship in a bottle. I used the file of the bottle I made when doing the Fusion360 tutorials, and imported a pirate benchy .stl file from MakerLab.

I didn't support the ship though, and I got a tangled mess.

I moved the ship to touch the bottom, and it printed great. Except the mast broke.

I thought turning the bottle sideways, and adding a support under Benchy would work, but I would not figure out how to get a support inside the bottle out after the print.

I also wanted to try to put Benchy in the bottle in Bambu Studios instead of Fusion360. I had lots of difficulty getting Benchy to move up along the z-axis. I learned to merge the 2 objects from Bambu Wiki by selecting the objects, right clicking, and choosing merge.

I tried to print the bottle upside down so that I could paint only the bottom of the boat and the outside of the bottle with supports. However, I had not yet learn about the paint supports, and the inside of the bottle was so full of supports Benchy was hidden. So I turned the bottle on its side.

I also used the information gathered from our group project to change the settings of my supports. I changed the threshold angle to 45,and the bridge length to 25. I also tried to make the tree supports thinner so that I could remove them from inside the bottle.

I got excited when I saw the support only from plate option that I forgot to support Benchy in the third print.

Since there was no Benchy, I stuck a cat in the bottle.

I also found out I can change the 2 pieces to have different filaments. This was the first and probably last time I will do a multicolor print, unless it is in stripes. There was so much waste from the color changes, and so much noise from the AMS spinning that my husband stopped the print thinking something was wrong. So the cat was never enclosed in the bottle.

I then watched this tutorial on using the paint supports option in Bambu Studio.

Tutorial on using Paint Supports in Bambu Studio

Supporting Benchy:

Lots of support:

This did work!! However I could not get the supports off of Benchy. They did break away from the bottle though so it looks like Benchy got stuck in an iceberg, and his mast fell off.

This image shows the inside of the bottle:

I later found the section view bar allows you to paint supports by layer. I could now see behind benchy to prevent the top of the bottle from being internally supported. There was one support that reached around the boat to the mast, but it looks like a sea serpent so I left it.

It worked, but the mast didn't attach correctly. This caused internal stringing.

The tree support on Benchy spread out too much to remove from the bottle. I had hoped I could knock it off Benchy, and use my styrofoam cutter (a long thin needle that heats up) to cut the branches off so they would fit through the opening. However, I underestimated how secure the supports would be. I can't knock them off Benchy.

I remembered that Claude.ai recommended that I make supports that could be shaken loose by following these steps:

• Support type: Normal (not tree)
  • tree supports grip more tightly and would be harder to remove through the bottle opening
• Support density: Low, around 5-10%
  • just enough to hold the ship during printing but weak enough to break apart when shaken

Unfortunately I was not paying attention, and my print failed once it reached Benchy. I think the support from under Benchy did not adhere well. You can see it tilted in the bottle.

I am trying one more time, but don't want to waste time and filament. So I cut the majority of the neck off the bottle.

Failed again.

Another day (or a few hours later), another try.
- sideways bottle - manual tree supports, painted on the bottom of the ship and bottle, and not allowed on the top inside of the bottle or anywhere else on the ship - back to 90% initial layer density - made Benchy as large as I could in hopes of keeping the mast on the ship. This also left less room to fill with supports

SUCCESS!

I was able to use a small crochet hook to break Benchy free from the inside of the bottle. The small amount of supports that remained on the boat look like he is riding in the waves. The mast stayed on, and you can even see the pirate flag!

This video shows the inside of the bottle. You can see the sail with the pirate flag, and even the cannon on the ship. I shake the bottle, and rotate it to show that the ship is not attached.

Bambu print file: final Benchy in a bottle

The Benchy lineup:

Mr. Dubick was concerned over the visibility of Benchy within the bottle. So I printed another 75% sized one of the last model in blue filament. It was so dark inside the bottle that I couldn't see anything. I used my styrofoam cutter to melt holes in the bottle, and hooked up leds. One is at the back on the bottom for moonlight, 3 are on top for twinkling stars. (I originally used a red led on the back to be the sunset, but then you wouldn't be seeing stars. So I changed it to a yellow led to be the moonlight on the water.)

I used Claude.ai to help me write a code for twinkling lights using the analog outputs on my xiao rp2040. Click here to see claude's help

Click here for the code

5-axis printer In open sharing time on Wednesday 2/25/2026 it was suggested that I use dissolvable support material or a 5-axis printer. I looked up 5-axis printers and found this open source multidirection 5-axis 3d printer and slicer. Here is the link to his github with the open source files. And in my latest Maker Magazine there was information about 5 axis printers, too!

3D scanning and printing

I used Polycam to scan a set of pinecones with my phone that does not have lidar. The free version only allows .glb exports. I then imported the file into Blender. Since it was a mesh object, it didn’t have any surface to 3D print. I used the solidify modification tool found on the left in the modify menu that looks like a wrench.

Then exported it as a .stl, and tried to print it on my Bambu P1S. I cut the base off so I just had the pinecones.

There was an error that it still had no thickness.

I tried different thicknesses, making sure they were greater than the printing nozzle size in meters. Still didn’t work.

I looked up other software, and KIRI Engine sounded great. The short video about their app sold me. A key selling point was the emphasis on photo scanning having the best results, since I do not have lidar on my phone. (I even ended up paying for the year subscription, because I appreciated the developers making a usable free product, and the price was very reasonable.)

The first tutorial in the KIRI Engine app says to move the camera around the object, DON'T move the object. My theory was that this is because of how shadows might be used in their algorithms. I decided to test this by putting my object on a turn table, covered on a cloth, in an area without point sources of light. The scanned object ended up being flat on the front face. It had the correct shape viewed from the front, but the back was a photograph projected on the inverse of the front mesh. I tried to capture this in these 2 screen shots.

I rescanned the object, this time walking around it. I circled the object on 3 levels, took additional close up images, and made sure the images overlapped by 70%. This created an amazing mesh object, which I exported as an .obj.

I just found out that I can save screenshots on my phone to iCloud files including dropbox and google drive, although I haven’t gotten them to go directly to google drive yet. I have to sign in to google, and then I don’t know where my file went to upload it. I have been able to save it to my iCloud, and then to Google Drive though! This is very helpful for sharing with my team on this project, and in other parts of my life.

I then imported the .obj into blender, and solidified it. Then I tried to 3D print it. It still didn’t work. I went back to blender.

In the Add Modifier → Generate menu and found that Skin “creates a solid shape from vertices and edges, using the vertex radius to define the thickness,” whereas Solidify makes “the surface thick.” I think skin might be a better choice for my object since it is a mesh network. I asked Claude. It said to check my object in edit mode to see if it was, “a wireframe/skeleton (just edges and vertices, like a stick figure)” or a, “surface like a shell or flat plane with no thickness.” I should use skin for wireframe, and solidify for a surface. This is confusing since a mesh is like a shaped chicken wire. So doesn’t that mean any mesh would be a wire frame? In sculpting I would make my desired shape using chicken wire, then cover it in paper mache or plaster. That seems like what we are doing here. That would be a skin. Then what is solidify?

Zooming in on my object in edit mode I see a mesh. I sent this screen shot to Claude to get its opinion.

I checked with Claude by showing it a screen shot. "That's a dense surface mesh with faces
(likely from sculpting or a 3D scan).
Solidify is the right choice if it needs
thickness.

However, this might already be a closed
solid — sculpted objects in Blender typically start from a solid primitive and stay watertight. Before adding Solidify, check first: 1. Go to Edit Mode 2. Select All (A) 3. Go to Mesh → Clean Up → Make Manifold, or use Select → All by Trait → Non Manifold If nothing gets selected with "Non Manifold," your mesh is already watertight and you can export it as-is to .stl for 3D printing — no modifier needed. If it does have holes, then add Solidify (Properties panel → Modifiers → Add Modifier → Solidify) and set a small thickness value."

In Edit Mode, I used Select → All by Trait → Non Manifold to find holes in the mesh.

Non-manifold edges lit up in orange, revealing the problem: the bottom of my scanned object was completely open.

I tried Mesh → Clean Up → Fill Holes, but it didn't work for such a large opening.

I am now trying a Boolean Union to merge the box I created that was harder than it should have been, because my main object is on an angle, and the move and rotate tools are strange. I am probably in the wrong mode or have selected faces when I should have selected something else. Claude gave me these directions.

"That's a good approach. Use a Boolean
Union to merge them:

1. Go to Object Mode (Tab)
2. Select your scanned object (click it)
3. Go to the Properties panel (right
   side) → Modifiers tab (wrench icon)
4. Add Modifier → Boolean
5. Set operation to Union
6. In the Object field, click the eyedropper and select the box
7. Click Apply
8. Then select the box and delete it (X) — it's now merged into your scanned object This will combine both meshes into one solid object with the box filling in the bottom. You can then export as .stl for printing. If the Boolean fails (it can be picky with complex meshes), try the simpler approach:
9. Select both objects
10. Press Ctrl+J to join them into one object
11. That should be enough for most slicers to handle"

It was not good enough, but I kept trying. I selected

I switched to another program, Tinkercad in hopes that the simple program could merge a block with the ferby to make a solid object.

I still could not get it to solidify. Furthermore, if I cut off the block the inside was still hollow.

At one point I thought I had it, but I was only printing the raft support. I noticed this before printing when I saw the short print time.

Having spent many hours attempting different ways to solidify Ferby and the pinecones, I asked Angela for help. She showed me a Autodesk Meshmixer, but it is only available on windows computers. I uploaded my ferby to a school computer to use Meshmixer.

Angela told me to make sure to delete the original file before exporting my solid version or they will both be exported.

I wanted to ask if anyone knows of another program that can make my scanned files solid on a Macbook, or other helpful advice during open time on Saturday, but I was unable to attend. I plan on bringing it up another day or in the mattermost channel. If Meshmixer was able to do this so easily why couldn't the other programs I used? Angela used the same software, and said she was able to print directly from the .obj file.

• after hearing that I tried importing my files as .obj instead of .stl, but that didn't work either.

I was finally able to print Ferby using the file from Meshmixer!

I was surprised that whenever I imported one of my 3d scanned files into Bambu Studio it was unsure if the file was in meters or inches, and would scale to mm. I tried saying yes to scaling and no to see what happened. Nothing noteworthy, it was very small in both cases. I scaled the ferby to 15000, and it was still small. I didn't want to print a true to size model, because of time anyway.

Final Ferby file:

Furby10 This is a .obj file, because I didn't want to take any chances with a .stl when it finally worked! I printed a mini one at the fab lab, and saved this file from Meshmixer so that I could print a larger size at home with my macbook.

Claude Help:

Claude help

Claude summary1

Claude summary2

AI 3d drawing:

Mr. Dubick gave us this article, and had us try some AI programs to create 3D models.

I used the prompt, "a creature with a ferret body, and a friendly dragon head with fur, standing upright" (or close to it) for each program. I will call the creature a ferrgon for ferret-dragon

Meshy.ai

While it was a little confusing navigating this program, especially how to download, it was really cool to see the computer's take on my description. - In the free account you must choose Meshy 4 on the left for model type to be able to export.

The first one was a bit creepy.

These were my renders.

I liked this one the best.

He was imported to, and printed straight from Bambu Studio. His appendages remained intact after removing the supports.

MakerLab also has a 3D object creation AI. I used the printMon Maker to make my little monster.

My first creation was a bit too cute. It also flipped my prompt, giving me a dragon's lower half with a ferret's head.

I liked my second one better.

Both MakerLab and Meshy exported .obj files that I was able to open right into Bambu Studio to print. I printed them small so that they would be 30 minute prints.

The Makerlab ferrgon suffered a quadruple amputation when removing the supports. The poor guy lost a hand, both feet, and the top of his tail. Printing him larger should fix that issue. Or I would have to reduce the skirt support, which is what captured his feet, and use paint to remove part of the hand support. Or I could try the normal supports that might break off easier.

AI generated print files:

Meshy-ferrgon3

Makerlab-ferrgon2