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Week 5

Assignment - 3D Printing and Scanning

  • Group assignment:
    • Test the design rules for your 3D printer(s)
    • Document your work on the group work page and reflect on your individual page what you learned about characteristics of your printer(s)
  • Individual assignment:
    • Design, document and 3D print an object (small, few cm3, limited by printer time) that could not be easily made subtractively
    • 3D scan an object (and optionally print it)

From Assignment Details.

Group Assignment / Testing Design Rules for your 3D Printer(s)

Reflection

It was useful thisweek, to do a lot of testing. It was really important to get the embedded inserts to work As well as the bridging, clearances (to compare with the laser cut model and to create the negative volume and cover the insert successfully).

The nozzle caught on the insert and showed the importance of vertical tolerance/layer height consideration.

This week I used Cura (online and offline), and the Ginger slicer. The 3d scan was unsuccessful, will try again.

Printing an object that could not be made with a subtractive process.

UltiMaker Overview

(See below, print insert versions…)

The Squiggle spring design was something I’ve seen a few places (including Magnus’ Card-a-pult, relevant also to final project, maybe due to paper handling).

Out of curiosity, I tried Cura Digital Factory (their in-browser slicer). I signed up and tried their prepare screen.

Cure DF Prepare

I couldn’t find any way to add a pause in the browser software, so I went to PrusaSlicer, and Cura (downloaded version).

PrusaSlicer With Pause

I had a look in the C-Code file. M601 is the layer pause, but there is no M602. Resume is triggered by the user.

;LAYER_CHANGE
;Z:4.6
;HEIGHT:0.2
;BEFORE_LAYER_CHANGE
;M117 Layer 22;
;LAYER:22
G1 E.0952 F1500 ; retract
G92 E0 ; reset extrusion distance
G1 Z4.6 F9000 ; simple layer change
;PAUSE_PRINT
M117 Place acrylic and resume printing
M601
G1 X149.925 Y106.816 ; etc…

…And when paused, make your insert:

UltiMaker Insert

Results of UMS5 Strength Tests

UltiMaker Tests

After resuming, filament stuck detected, caused by not enough clearance between the nozzle and the acrylic. This wasn’t my print fortunately:

Blob of Death photo

Making Custom Test (Overhang, and Bridging) on the G1

Photo resultBridge File Screenshot

It also tests retraction and stringing.

Bridge File Screenshot

Scanning

  • OpenScan Mini
  • Built this week from the kit. Uses a spare Raspberry Pi 3B.

Photogrammetry

I’m hoping to use OpenScan Cloud (not received a token key yet), a cloud-based Photogrammetry service developed by the same developer. In the meantime, I will use Meshroom or Reality Composer (as documented by Diarmuid Kelly in 2025).

So, at this stage, we have a lot of images :)

Scanning Images

This is a web-tool by the developer, which, very generously, allows processing from the OpenScan, for free, on his server:OpenScanCloud Uploader. You receive an email when the process is done, with a download link. There is also a button to do this automatically from the device dashboard.

Uploading Images

This is what you get when it doesn’t work out:

Hi,

unfortunately, OpenScanCloud was not able to reconstruct your 3d model.

Make sure, that the object's surface has enough features and See this guide to improve your results: Photogrammetry Basics on Github

In case of further questions or problems feel free to join the discussions on Reddit or Facebook

Best Regards,
[Developer]

This is the result you should get: Example file on SketchFab

Files