3d scanning and printing

Printing a few things...

3d printing

First I had to look for some tutorials to make up my mind as to what design I should go after. I was looking for something simple, yet challenging, and something for which I should have a good starting point with the tutorials. Otherwise designing the part could get out of hands. I also had in mind the objective of doing something that could help me for my final project. Since my final project will entail to do a vehicle powered by a motor, I figured out that working with transmission parts would be very beneficial. I decided to work with gears as this kind of part would help me to fulfill these two objectives. I found an excellent tutorial on how to build a planetary gear in Solidworks, see here.

Once I started moving in this direction I encountered a few challenges. First I had interferences or overlap among the gears. This is something I am going to have to understand better in the coming projects.

< Once the part was already modeled and as I was trying to export it, I noticed that Solidworks was exporting 4 different files. This was so, as my assembly had 4 different parts and it had been exporting them separately. This is an excellent tutorial for exporting STL from Solidworks in a single consolidated file see here here.

Off I go and send the file to the TA of my section and have it printed in the Dimension printer. There were 5 parts inside the printer at once (only one printing at any time). The estimated completion time was around 1 and half days.

3d scanning

Scanning an image was a futuristic exercise. The challenge was that the person with the scanner in hands positions correctly. I scanned myself and the best way to do this was to use a chair that rotates and have the person with the scanner stand still.