3D Scanning and Printing



Our Fablab in Aachen houses currently two working 3D-Printers


The DREMEL® 3D IDEA BUILDER is good for rapid prototyping, since the software for it is easy to use, the filament is cheap and it prints decently fast. One of the problems is that the quality of the print can vary depending on room temperature, filament, moisture and several other factors which we are still trying to find. But most of the time the printed result is decent. Also so missing ability to use support material makes it a little lesse versatile.

The Dimension Elite is used when it is necessary that the print needs support material. Aside from that the layer resolution is a litte worse compared to the Dremel printer. The closed and heated chamber of the printer makes environmental influences less of a problem. But the filament is expensive so it is not used that often.

3D-Scanning




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We used a Microsoft Kinect 2 with the Microsoft 3D Scan Software to scan ourself. The software is realy simple and after playing around with the parameters and position of the kinect camere we had decent results. ( Because of the Laptop which we used we had to choose a lower resolution).

We stood on a small rotating plattform while the camera+software were generating the 3D Model. The final model can be exported in the STL file format to use it with other software.

The nerdy use case for this was rather simple . . . Carbonite Han Solo !?


123Design

STL File from the 3D Scanner

Carbonite 123D Design File

123Design

Finished 3D Print



As a small example, for something that is harder to do with substractive design methods, I created a cube with a sphere inside which is movable after the printing. I created the Model in 123Design ( Application Web Page ) and printed it with a DREMEL® 3D IDEA BUILDER ( Application Web Page ).


Cube Thingy 123D Design File

Design Rules:



Tesprint Dremel (left green)
Sadly the Dremel3D Software does not give a lot of options. Depending on the Material there are often some problems with the retraction but the Dremel3D software does not give an option to correct this. However the print has a decent quality. The overhang parts are pretty well and the small numbers are readable but not good.
The following Parameters were used for this.



You can leave most of the settings at their default state. The parameter which gets changed the most is the infill one. Depending on how robust your print needs to be you can increase or decrease the infill. 35% ist the standard parameter but I usually print at 10%. With this the model is robust enough and the print is finished a lot faster.



Testprint Dimension (right white)
As I already wrote before, good thing about the dimension printer is that it is pretty consistent but the filament for the prints is expensive and the print resolution is at a medium level. This was also represent with the test print. The overhanging parts are good, because the printer uses support material. All shapes and holes where good. The Numbers and Letters showed the limits of the dimension printer. The numbers are only blobs of plastic and the text is barely readable. In contrast to the dremel the dimension printer has no problems with retraction.
However the software for the dimension printer also does not provide a lot of options. The options we use are:

  • Layer Resolution: 0,2540
  • Model Interior Density: Sparse - high density
  • Support Fill: Sparse