04

3D Printing & Scanning

My fridge is bare of magnets, but I refuse to buy knick knacks. What's the solution? Solution: have a great week 3D printing! But really, this week was a week of yums:

  • I thought I'd try Blender for the first time and now I think it's the best software ever.
  • My lab has these fancy form lab printers which I've never used before, and now I'm in awe of their print detail.
  • I'm getting use to a 6-input 3DConnexion CAD mouse and flying thru the drawing was pretty awesome.
  • Man was I impressed with PolyCam - what I thought was just a little hinky dink photogrammetry app.

Fridge Tentacles

After finishing version 1 of Fridge Tentacles (TM) on Blender, I move to Fusion to close up the holes and repair the mesh, then off to PreForm for automated supports.
My biggest gripe is that Fusion is SLOW with any amount of model complexity. Fixing holes even for this mesh took MINUTES.

But v1 did not have enough tentacles so went off to v2 with more tentacles following the same process. I thought I'd leave some of the tentacles a bit jagged & polygon-y. And other tentacles I'd give the smooth over and sculpted a couple water drops on.

Now to set up the formlabs printer with all of its toxic fumes and let it print! I used Tough 2000 resin, and also wanted to try a print with the flexible resin, but the wiper kept getting detached :^/, so that'll be for another time After printing there's a baking step (30 min for 70C), and a curing step (60 min for 70C).

Statue or Ancient Iron Being?

Right outside of my lab in Killian Court there's this sick statue. I sit most days staring at it while I eat lunch. Sometimes it even holds my friends (shout out to Soojung)!

The statue doesn't appear on MIT's campus art listing, so I guess I can only assume it was here before time. An ancient iron being (AIB). And the campus was built around it. Anyway, I thought it'd be sweet to make my own little Ancient PLA being with a photogrammetry app.

Having tinkered a little, and tried myself to make a photogrammetry program for a hackathon once upon a time, but finding it very difficult with lots of vector math (maybe I approached it incorrectly?). Couple the inherent difficulty with the variable lighting, the shiny/metallic surface of the AIB, the backdrop of greenery & people walking around the quad. I really didn't have high expectations at all. But I was really really pleasently surprised! Shout out to PolyCam for being really a great app. After only ~50 images and ~30 seconds of thinking it gave me a really workable model.

Then it was just cleaning up a little in Blender (the smoothing tool in sculpt is amazing). Really Blender feels like the best thing I've ever used. I'm smitten.

I thought I'd autograph my name on the bottom of the model, then sent it off to Fusion for repair & for adding slots for magnets, then off to Stratys for printing (to mix things up a little).

Tadaa! My very own little ancient PLA being!