Week 5
3D Scanning and Printing
Our 3D Printer
Wistek 2805 Printer
What is the 3D printing?
It is an additive manufacturing process that creates a physical object from a digital design. There are different 3D printing technologies and materials we can print with, but all are based on the same principle: a digital model is turned into a solid three-dimensional physical object by adding material layer by layer.
The first time i have ever seen 3D printed object was last year in Dubai, I was really impressed when i saw the beauty of the 3D printed building near to Sheikh Zaid road.In this assignment i have got the chance to explore this world and read more about it, test it and have my 1st 3D design printed. I decided to design and print an Iphone stand by using Onshape for designing and Wistek 2805 3D printer that using PLA material.
In order to test the accuricy of our printer we printed as a group the test design shown below to identify the percision of the 3D printer. As we see, we should avoid desining small edge cuts or letters.
Note : The printer works on Fcode files therefore we need to convert the .SLT files by REALvision software befor send it for printing.
I learned from the first test to not how to fix the printer and set it up before start printing
The printer has a limitation as any of other devices as you can see in the following photo. It is showing the an additional material sprading out of the design limits due to a relatively large empty space in the design without any supports.
I am still learning about the 3D printing and figuring out the mistake So far I have done 3 attempts in addition to the Iphone stand and by each one of them I faced a problem as listed below :
1st Attempts
I though the problem was because of the complication and the size of design and to avoid this I made another one at the 2nd attempt.
2nd Attempt
In this attempt I made a simple and bigger design to not have a tinny details as same as that I had in the first one but unfortunately due to the shortage of materials I lost it :(
3rd Attempts
Another failure with the same design but this time the failure was because of lack of supports. I didn't add supporting items to the spherical shape in order to support the printing material.
4th Attempts
I change the design totally and avoid all of the mistake that I had in the previous attempts. I make the sizeof the object relatively small, simpler than the previous one and supported materials have been added to the design.
The new design (download )
During Printing
Finally I did it. :)
Some useful resources:
https://3dprinting.com/what-is-3d-printing/
https://www.3dhubs.com/what-is-3d-printing
3D Scanning :
its creating a 3D models by using a device that analyses a real-world object or environment to collect data on its shape .
we use this 3D scanner in our lab (more information)
I scaned myself (Download) and a tool box as a small object (Download)