October 6, 2021

Week 4:
3D printing and Scanning

Printing something that can not be manufactured/machined subtractively.

Important Data:Group assignment documentation

This is me! We used the 3D sense in EECS shop to produce my 3D model. You can see in the side view that certain angle on the back of my head was not covered by the 3D scanner. If you look closely, the 3D scanner also struggled with reconstructing my safety glasses. (Credits: Rima Das, I scanned her lol)

The design of this 3D print is relatively straight forward. I drew up an cage and downloaded a model of a human brain from the internet (this link). After merging two designs together and printign it, I have this (image above). The interesting about this build is the cross members on the top side of the cage. They are technically a bit too long according to design rule tests. But, the printer/PLA came through for me and the top of the cage did not sag too much (although you can see a little bit of sagging on the bottom of it).

On one interesting note, my computer had a hard time to convert/smooth this mesh model of human brain. I suppose there are simply too many vortices and calculation to do. Not sure how to improve this. But if you look at the model, there are amazing details on the outside of the brain, which was somewhat realistically reproduced by the sindoh printer in the EECS shop.


Today I Learned:

Bridging might be able to support longer hanging parts? Need to push the limit.