3D scanning and printing

Week 6

This weeks assignment was in 3 parts one group project and 2 individual projects.
The group project is was to test the design rules for your 3D printer.
The individual assignment was first to design and 3D print an object that could not be made subtractively.
The second assignment was to 3D scan an object and optionally print it.

Group Assignment

In the group project we tested the 3D printer. making a test part that checked many things including bridge test and ohole test. The documentation is on our group website.

3D printing

3D printers are good for making some 3D designes but they often make things rough and not with alot of details. Finding the right setting for the printer can be hard and it takes a long time to make things. You can not make things with to much incline and often you get stringing. However I think the 3D printer is a fun way to make 3D things easily. In the Computer-aided design week I started making one part of a clip that I would like to have as a part of my final projectgit. It can not be made subtractively because it is hollow on the inside.
In this week I finished the design and printed it.

I have never used the 3D printer before so I had to take some time to learn how to use it.
When we made the group project the girls taught me how to use it.
The design did not take long to print and was ready in under 2 hours.
To use the 3D printer I had to save my file from fusion as STL.
Then in Ultimaker Cura I get all of my settings right, as can be seen on the picture below.

Then I save the file from Cura on a SD card and put the SD card in the printer.
The material I used was PLA so I had to make the build plate temperature 60°C
and the nosel temperature 210°C. Then just let it print.

3D scanning

For the 3D scanning I want to scan in the other part of the clip.

Next engine 3D scanner

First try

I used the next engine 3D scanner.The outcome was not good with a lot of holes in it.
I tried to fix it in the next engine scan studio but the holes were to many and they would not fill in correctly.


Second try

We suspected that the reason why the scan was not good enough was because the texture of the clip was to shiny.
So we put potato flour all over it. Then let the scanner go again with the only change being that it was a neutral colour now.
The result was a lot better with not as many holes but the angle It was in was not good enough


Third try

I had the clip in a new position. It was hard getting to stay in the position
but I cut a box into a cardboard and put double sided tape in the bottom of the box
and the clip staid up through the scanning.
The outcome was pretty good and a lot better in this position then in the other positions.
Now I would like to work with the model and try and make it printable.


Recap pro

Now I am going to try the Recap Pro from Autodesk, so I took 100 pictures of the clip.
I took the pictures in a small room that I was alone in so no one would be moving in the background because that can confuse the program.
I also found a few objects to put around the clip to help the program locate the clip.
Then I put 100 pictures into the program and let it run.


The outcome was pretty good but for some reason it made some solid parts that were not supposed to be solid.
Bas told me that the program sometimes has more problems with smaller parts so that might be the problem.
I tried to fix the design in Recap pro but it was not good enough, so I moved it in to Meshmaker.
There I removed the parts that were not supposed to be there and smoothed it out.
Working in Meshmaker was a lot like working with clay and the result was quite good.


Modela milling machine

In my last try I used the modela milling machine to 3d scan my clip.
I used dr. picza and in it I have to go to scanning area and make the X and Y scan pitch 0.20 and the Z bottom was 0 in this case.
I make the test erea as small as I can without missing any parts of the clip.
Do not forget to set the Z upper limit because it will shorten the scanning time a lot.
Then press okei and Scan.
It took a long time to finish scaning but the outcome was really good
however the modela milling machine can only scan one side so I can not use the clip.
I am now trying to scan the other side and see if I can mesh the two sides together.

Here is a good documentation about how to use the modela milling machine to 3D scan in Icelandic
and here is also a video in Icelandic about how to use it.
and here is a documentation about how to find the spool to make the modela milling machine scan and not mill.

Here is a short video of the milling machine 3D scanning the clip.


Problems and solutions

Working with 3D takes way longer then I was expecting
so time management was an issue this week but I got everything done
but I would have liked to spend more time working on my scaned models.

3D printing

The proportions were not right. My first mistake was calculating wrong from cm to mm.
But in the ultimaker cura I could just change it to 10% of the size and that was the right size.
My other problem with size was that I was modelling It after a clip I already owned and measuring some sizes was hard
so it was a little bigger then the original so I might have to shrink it more so the clip fits together.

3D scanning

I think 3D scanning always has some problems at least in my case.
I could not find the perfect 3D scanning form so in the documentation you can see what went wrong.

Software I used


Microsoft Photos - For photo editing.
Gimp -For photo editing.
Windows Movie maker -For editing the video.
Ultimaker Cura - For 3D printing.
RECAP - For 3D scanning.
Fusion 360 - For 3D modeling.
NextEngine ScanStudio - For 3D scanning.
Meshmixer - For 3D modeling.
Dr.picza - For 3D scanning.

Files from this week


Clip for final project designd in Fusion.
3D Scanning with modela milling machine.