WEEK 3 : 3d Printing and Scanning

For this week's assignment on 3D printing I decided to start off by sketching some different geometries in rhino and Grasshopper in order to create a stable (hopefully structural) frame, the idea for this week is to have fun and create some sort of art piece? I want to explore ideas of containment/expansion of organic forms within rigid structural geometries. So using the 3d printing process in order to create that structural element

After I determined the geometry I wanted I sent it to the slicer and started looking at different ways to slice the geometry in order to reduce the support material, for example in the picture below you can see that splitting the geometry in half radically reduces the support material needed for the print

Then I sent two tests to the abs printer one of the geometry split in half and another one of the full, the smaller test took 4 hours to run while the big print took about 12 hours

When the prints where finally done I had to put it in a sodium hydroxide tank in order for the supports to dissolve.

The prints marinated for about 12 hours in the tank in order for the supports do be fully dissolved and then I let it dry for about half an hour in order for the solution to fully dry

After the printing process the print was ready to be post treated

PRIME! PRIME! PRIME! I then added to the print three layers of primer to give the print more structural stability and make it smooth so you slowly lose perception of the fact that the object is a 3d print this is specially good to give metallic textures to the print.

Not perfect but metallic texture look semi accomplished!

Now the organic aspect of the piece and ready to test the structural properties of ABS comes the balloon, I drilled a hole in the structure and then filled a balloon with expanding foam. This process was messy! use gloves!!!

This is the result of the balloon starting the expanding process

This is how it was looking!

All was good! But then I went to bed and the foam kept expanding and expanding and expanding.....

and this is how it was looking then.. kinda cool! but the expanding foam crushed the 3d printed material even though it was primed like 10,000 times!

Then I thought it would be cool to 3d scan the object and compare it to the original 3d modelled frame

The scannings were not perfect because of the crazyness of the object and probably my terrible panning abilities, but they probaly were a some what an accurate reflection of the explosion of the frame while I was sleeping.

Enjoy some glamour shots!