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.

Expeditions in 3D

We have taken the plunge into maker thinking with a 3D printer in the school library, available for anyone in the school. We have started out as an extracurricular club, with two of us staff-advising (thank you Mr. Le!) with the hope that as the students learn and refine the process they will be able to share tips with others. The students' first project has been to learn to design in a 3D digital program (originally SketchUp, but we may also to try TinkerCad, 123D, 3Dtin, and perhaps others) to create architectural scale models of the library furnishings in order to use them with a blueprint as we redesign the space.

It is a steep learning curve, it all still seems very "beta": the software (either for designing or printing) is not wrinkle-free yet, and not intelligent enough to discover (and announce or fix) gaps or geometric consistency errors in our designs that will goof up in the printer, but we have plowed on with new successes bit by bit.

It is super easy to print from a ready-made and tested design (ex. from Thingiverse, and some of our prints on the left),

but the real challenge is to design something of your own creation and have it successfully transfer and print.

While it is easy to joke about a pricey machine just to make 25 cent plastic doohickeys, that is of course not the point. The students are learning to think in 3D, learning new technologies, to design a 3D object in a 2D digital platform, to transform life size objects into proper architectural scale, to be at the forefront working in a medium that will be normal in a couple of years, to be a maker not just a consumer, to solve problems as they come up, to investigate, research, and test solutions, to be patient, to explore, that failure is part of learning, and success is all the sweeter when you've worked hard for it.

We are using a Makerbot Replicator 2X.

Here are a few of our discoveries:

1. Prints take a LOOOOOOONG time. We're not talking Star Trek replicators (yet!) A small object the size of a quarter may take 12 minutes, but anything larger, like this, can take almost two hours, and more solid objects can take many more hours.
2. You really have to be there and watch over the printing process. Don't just start it and walk away. Prints can fail at any stage and leave you with a big mess (the "blob" being one). Our first blob (which was supposed to be my house) fortunately only wrapped around the extruder metal heated parts so was easy to scrape off, but one poor fellow had to replace his extruder after an overnight blob crept up into the wiring. Blob vs. house: 
   
3. Not everything sticks to the build plate (even with a raft) so you have to stop the build. We will play around with acetone on the kapton surface, heating the build plate a bit more, slowing the print. It would be nice if we could slow the beginning of the print then speed it up once established. The software is not sophisticated enough to allow that yet.
   
4. We had originally purchased the bot with the intention of using PLA plastic instead of ABS plastic for environmental reasons (PLA being a kind of sugar-based plastic, with a lower melt temperature, and fewer fumes). But after trial and error we discovered the 2X really isn't optimized for PLA after all. We were lucky enough to have only opened 2 spools of filament and could return and replace our other spools for ABS.
5. Our initial default prints (pre-designed and loaded in the Makerbot SD card) went fine, though we were disappointed to see little flaws in the final products (some threads of ABS don't seem as tight as they should be, some little blobs at the end of the M Token print, some rough surfaces). Such is the current state of the technology (at our price point).
6. The first student-designed item, a wrench, went quite well, though testing it at different profile resolutions (standard, high, low) gave confusing counter-intuitive results, we'll have to play with that more.
7. Sadly several of the next student-designed prints failed. They were simple objects, bookshelves, but the prints came out badly, with missing shelves, or shelves only partially completed and more. We have no idea why.
   
8. We were recommended (by Makerbot tech support) to run any of our .stl files through cloud.netfabb.com, and that has really helped "clean up" the files to successfully print. But we don't know why the translation from Sketchup to Makerware created such a poor prints in the first place.
     
   
9. We still don't quite get how to work with "shells" and what to do about them. Netfabb consistently reduces the shells in our files, and we can alter the number of shells in Makerware, but haven't learned enough yet why or when to do so nor what effect they will have. We're hoping it cleans up and tightens the prints.
10. I had a terrific Google+ Hangout session last night with two (new to me) twitter colleagues who are also integrating 3D printing with their programs, thanks @TeacherHann and @hdurnin!), it's a great way to pool our experience. We'll share a sample .stl file to print on each of our machines for comparison. Here are a few more tips to check that I learned from them: 
1. be sure the build plate and nozzles are properly aligned and calibrated 
2. check that "preheat the build plate" is in fact checked off in Makerware > make > advanced > temperature)
3. design everything as "components" in SketchUp to avoid gaps and errors
4. we might try cleaning the kapton (with acetone?), and slowing the prints for ones that don't seem to stick well.

We'd love to hear your experiences too, please add to the collective knowledge as we learn to integrate these new technologies!

(images updated April 4 2014)

Our 3D printer!

Part of the Library as Learning Commons program is to provide a venue for students to explore and be exposed to new ideas and technologies they may otherwise not have access to. As such, the Library has acquired a MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer, a small step into a "maker" culture and philosophy. Basically it can slowly "print" (create) three dimensional objects from PLA or ABS plastic filament. Here is our club as they set it up, and the first item they printed (about the size of a quarter, took 15mns). Check out a few links below for more info. 

The 3D Club with Mr. Le will be working on an initial project to design and replicate scale models of the library furniture to help with re-designing the space.

I encourage anyone who wishes to learn about the system for any potential class projects. We can imagine a host of subject-relevant projects in Art, Sciences, Math, Business and more (how about locally designed trophies or badges?). We will be asking club members to hold demonstrations and workshops.

We will most likely be running it on a cost-back basis (the material costs ~5 cents a gram). Generally the items will be small for now (the bigger and denser the objects, the longer it takes and the more material it uses). We will be opening it up for broader student use eventually: they may submit applications to print designs they have designed themselves (not downloaded pre-fab designs), or we may open contests (ex: design a solution to a problem). Details will be worked out later.

A few ideas to learn more about 3D printers:

·         3D Printers in schools

·         Demonstration (with a scanner which we don't ~yet~ have)

·         Art teacher designs a mug

·         High School Projects

·         High School students furnish a castle

·         Thingiverse - a site for sharing printed objects and the design files to create them

·         Lucky Charms - a solution to a problem you didn't even know you had

A few starter tips:

• Getting started with SketchUp (which is installed on all school computers, and free download for home use)
• Tinkercad, another 3D design program

It's a fun future!