Mathieu Laporte

At échoFab we usually use the Ditto Pro Tinkerine that we bought at Volxel Factory. We have two of them at the lab. The first reason we bought this printer was that, even if we built some DIY printers, we needed a printer that would be key in hand and always working as we receive a lot of visits from politicals, business and others. As the first Fab Lab in Canada a lot of people are interesting in our model. Another reason was that the printer was developed in Canada and as a reseller in Montréal. It makes our life way easier because we travel around the city a lot with the machine, it is touch a lot and breaks often. On a darker side, it does break a lot I think and as a person interested in art and technology I find the resolution of the machine a bit low.

We are using the 3D printer for a while already in the lab and had the opportunity to experiment a lot on this machine. I would say that everything happened with this model of 3D printer. The more frequent problem is that the nozzle gets blocked a lot of time. But, as I sais it's often used to experiment by beginners. I guess it makes it part of experimenting. What we proposed to face that challenge was to find the best generic setting so we have a good combination of setting to start with the users. It as been a long evolution of test so, instead of going the process again, I decided to show what we already did in the lab. We always use this benchmark little boat as the test model because it seemed adequate to us. Each time we keep the model, so I have some tests to show you!

The first one (the orange one) is the best we had and represent the settings we use as start for us and the user. Here's the settings :

From there, it is possible to adapt easily the setting for good results. Last week, I used those specific setting to print my object. It wasn't that good but I think it was because the technology wasn't the best for that delicate object.

This week we had the challenge to develop and print and object that could not to made by another machine in the lab. So, I decide to make an object in an object. TO my opinion, there's no more representative than that to show what kind of project or work a 3D printer can do. The problem here was that I've never really touched a 3D modeling software. Well, there's no better time to begin than now. As I also said in the previous pages, I wanted to introduce myself to Fusion360. So this is what I did. I began my introduction by looking at some tutorials.

The tutorials were more about getting my hand dirty and practice a little bit. Learning some basic practical technics that would allow me to do exactly what I wanted to do for this assignment.

At the end of those, I was very happy to see that I had a concrete idea of how I could do what I wanted to do first! So, that idea, as I said before, was to create an object in an object. I have to say that I didn't meet many problems yet in this phase even if I did two different version of it. I did two versions for one main reason. I wanted to be able to replicate the process more than one time. Often, as a beginner, you do something once and you're very easily proud of it but at the end, can not do it again. To me, that makes the difference between having learned something and doing thing by luck.

Here's the final final result and I'll show the process after.

• 1. Sketching half the object, as it is symmetrical. What I found interesting, because it is parametric, is that you can draw a small line and then chose the precise dimension for it (The two first pictures). Then, Then, to do the curve, you choose the spline tool in the sketch menu.
• 2. Revolve. That function takes the drawing as a base and make a circular 3D object with it.
• 3. Place a offset line that'll be the plce where to cut the object.
• 4. Cut the top part to make 2 differents bodies so you can work them separately.
• 5. Do the same for the bottom part. At the end, you have three independant pieces.
• 6. Empty the main body and create the thickness with the shell function.
• 7. Create the main paterns. Return on sketch view and project what the 2D looks like using the project function. Then, draw the partern using the sketch tools.
• 8. Extrude the part. The main body will change from a complete structure to two small pieces that'll be the base from the patern.
• 8. Extrude the part. The main body will change from a complete structure to two small pieces that'll be the base from the patern.
• 9. Isolate one the pieces and replicate it all around the body.
• 10. Do the same for the mirror piece and then combine all the pieces.
• From there, I'll begin to construct the object inside the first structure. There were no issues doing this one too. Fusion360 is pretty user-friendly and the tutorials very abundant.
• 11. So, I first extruded the base up till the top to have a new body to work on. I had to seperate the new shape from the top and bottom as for the first body.
• 12. Empty the center of the piece and then create the thickness with the shell function.
• 13. I went back to the steps 7 to 10 and applied them to this body.
• And ... there you go !!

Printing the object

From that part of the assignment, I'm both satisfied and challenged. It went pretty well overall, but the small prototype I made wasn't that great because the real sized model would take to much time. It was way too fragile and the resolution was a bit low. I printed it with our Ditto Pro but I'd be very, but VERY, curious to see what the Formlab could have done.

As I said earlier, I took a lot of time setting thw machine in the past. So, my conclusion is definitly that the obect was to complex for the kind of machine we have. Here's the process to print the object :

• 1. I had to export the Fusion360 file to a .stl.
• 2. Then, I import the .stl in Cura, which is the software we usualy use in the lab. As you can see, I use an older version of it because I like this version better.
• 3. The original size of the object would take to much time to print and other users in the lab needed the printer. So, I decided to print it in a smaller scale, about a third of the original size. To do that, I choose the scale tool and shrink it proportionally with the blue cube. Now, it'll take about 2 hours and will take 6 grams of PLA which seemed reasonable to me.
• 4. Then, I had to choose the right settings. I based myself on the settings we got from the tests section. Here the are :
• 5. Creating the Gcode than put it in a SD card and print it.
• Here's the result. As I said, there not that good. I was very satisfied with the model I created, but not that much about the result from the printing. I still think I would have been much better with an SLA printer. I did two version of it. The first one is the small one with all the imperfection on the upper part. Basically, it wasn't stable enough and the head of the printer was making it move a little bit which caused the lack of quality of it. As for the second, it was much better, but I didn't have the time to print it completely but the part I printed is good I think.

3D scanning

3D scanning was pretty exciting! At the lab, we used to scan with the Kinect and with Skanect software. Overall, we always had a great time with it and alright results. This said the conditions have to be perfect so it gives you good results. Also, it does 360° scans but lacks the capacity to scan on top or bottom of an object. Finally, the software is free but you are limited in terms of faces generated in the final model. The quality is quickly affected. So, I used the excuse of us beeing in Fab Academy to make a budget approved to buy a new scan. That is very exciting !!!! We bought the Sense-scan.

Wow ! what an amazing product it is. Well, at least when looking at the publicity and tutorial. But well, our first experience wasn't that great. As our main experience with 3D scanning was with the Kinect, we started by trying to make a 360° movement around the object or the person we were trying to scan. The models generated weren't very good lacking a lot of details. We didn't understand right away that we could move back and forward or up and down. Also, we weren't sure how to make a good movement and fill the shape that was being generated on the screen.

After watching some tutorials, we finally understood the way of scanning with that tool. Here's some picture of me doing it !

The results were alright. I think we still need to develop a bit of dexterity with the tool but overall it was satisfying. Here's some results.