Steps for 2D to 3D printing @RCILibrary

Steps for 2D to 3D printing @RCILibrary

EUREKA! We've found a way to include more students in the world of 3D printing allowing them to hand-draw (2D) designs to print.

1. Create your drawing, black line on white paper (all lines must touch and not be floating separately unless you intend to put it all on a solid base in step 4.)
2. Take a photo of your drawing .
3. Upload the photo (as a .jpg) to http://www.online-convert.com/ to convert from .jpg to .svg file
4. Import the .svg file into Tinkercad, then add/delete/fix/resize as you wish in Tinkercad (ex. you could add a solid base, or change thickness , fill in gaps etc).
5. From Tinkercad, “download for 3D printing” as an .stl file
   
   
6. Upload the .stl file to cloud.netfabb.com (now https://netfabb.azurewebsites.net/ ) to “fix” any gaps
7. Upload/drop the “fixed.stl” file to MakerWare
8. In Makerware: resize as you wish, pick which extruder (color) you want, select if it will need supports or a raft, and “make” the .xg3 file, and save the .thing file (as backup, which you can re-edit in Makerware later) (Figure 3).
   
9. Copy the .xg3 file onto the library Makerbot SD card
10. Pick a time you have (with library aid) to run the print!  (Figure 4)
11. the printed item:  

@LisaJDempster Riverdale CI Toronto Ontario Canada

Trials with Makerbot's Digitizer - Star Trek replicating soon?

It has been quite a sudden learning curve, but our intrepid in-house 3D student experimenter (Andrew Bradley) has been steadily testing and observing and improving the use of the Makerbot Digitizer that our deal-finding principal (Kenn Harvey) brought in Monday.

Andrew unboxing the digitizer

1) Straight out of the box, it produced some pretty scary blobs:

From this to this

2) then we adjusted the lighting, and found that a COMPLETE DARKNESS around the digitizer, minimizing any other light interference with the lasers, helped tremendously.

Below are the original object (on the left), an 80% sized print (center) and a 50% sized print, with the digitizer rendering below

It is still a fairly primitive copy, kind of fuzzy on the details, and a few details missed altogether (one fin is short, one side of the tail fin has gaps). But it is recognizable and fixable.

3) And here's the magic black box our resourceful principal made to block out the light (with little to no shiny tape on the inside to avoid laser reflections):

4) Our attempt at replicating digitizing and printing a copy of a calculator created new issues: the laser/camera setup cannot interpret the glass surface of the display window and light-charge windows, so it simply left them out (big holes). Kind of funny and cute. We printed a tiny replica:

Pretty fuzzy on the details and sloppy edges, but recognizable.

So it isn't a Star Trek replicator... yet. Early days, not quite ready for prime time, but the software and hardware will no doubt improve in the next few years.