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Project 3 - 3D Scanning and Printing

This week I learned how to use a 3D printer and scanner.

Goals

Class Assignment:

Things I took away from this week

The Play-by-Play

  1. Solidworks! Yay
  2. I wanted to make a smol birb. To make it somewhat useful, I decided to make a little Bird Box. I'd make the bird hollow and add a way to ensure that it stayed closed. To make it extra light, I made the head hollow as well.
  3. Printing!
  4. After ensuring that the bird didn't violate any of the design contraints discovered in the class assignment,it was time to click print and hope and pray that it worked. I kept all settings default, except I lowered the infill from 20% to 15% to make sure it was especially light. I added supports and clicked print. I stayed by the printer for a couple of layers to ensure that it was printing correctly, then just sat in the lab and waited for the job to finish. Once printed, I took the bird off of the plate with a putty knife (i think that's what that's called). The bird turned out pretty well! Save for a few imperfections in the surface, it was a pretty smooth boib. However, something strange happened on the bottom half. The rim was not perfectly level. I'm not sure why this happened, although perhaps the part was at a slight angle when I imported it to 3DWok and the angle was so slight that I didn't realize. Also, the notch in the top half of the bird was omitted, perhaps because the model was out of date? Unsure. I was supposed to scan something in this time, but got completely distracted and forgot entirely. I will update this page later in the week when I go back to scan my mouse. In the meantime, enjoy these *adorable* pictures of my boi.
  5. Scanning!
  6. stay tuned for updates