Week 2: 3d printing and scanning

Skills used: Fusion 360, Prusa 3d printer, 3d Sense scanner

3d printing: For this week, our assignment was to 3d print something that couldn't be made subtractively. I spent a while thinking about what would fit the bill for that that would be fun to learn to make using CAD software. I decided to make a shape that I like to make on the wheel, a jar that's bellied out wide in the middle, with a small neck. I started with a cylinder and learned to "sculpt" it in Fusion to adjust the different shapes. It almost felt like I was throwing at the wheel (almost).

From the original form, I used "thicken" to expand it in width so it creates a full 3d shape. I had to add an additional bottom to the pot because it ended up not being perfectly flat.

I thought a vase with such a small neck would be hard to make subtractively, but then Anthony told me more about lathes (woah!) so I decided to add an internal element inside the pot. Anyone who has thrown things on the wheel that have a skinny neck know what it's like to be feeling good about what you're throwing, go to close up the precarious opening at the top, only to drop your dumb sponge to the bottom of the pot where you can't reach it without your arm ruining the top of the pot. I added a sponge shape by curving the edges of a rectangle and adding small supports to the base of the sponge connected to the base of the pot so I wouldn't need to use support material when printing.

An ode to frustration.

The final printed pot after snapping the sponge free from the supports.

3d scanning: This was a frustrating process...my original plan was to scan a toy that I have in my apartment that was a gift from a friend that I thought would be fun to print a friend for. But it was too small for the 3d sense scanner to pick up, so I decided to use something more culturally relevant and scan the MIT disinfectant in the shop.

It was difficult to get the scanner to only focus on the object I wanted it to in a room with a lot of distractions, but I found that this black gridded cutting mat worked well enough to keep track of the image (at least better than cardboard or the table or the floor or a gray cart).

The 3d scanned image. A bit chunky but you can get the idea.

A link to the STL for my pot of frustration

A link to my STL scan