assignment
This week, we had two assignments: to 3d print something (that cannot be made through subtractive synthesis) and to 3d scan something. For my printing assignments, I became very obsessed with creating iPhone accessories for some reason. For scanning, I tried scanning my iPhone but it turned out poorly, so I settled for a nice scan of my noggin. Maybe I'll 3D print it into a bust of my head at some point!
printing | |
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With such a loosely defined assignment to print "something," I started thinking about things I could print that would provide me at least some utility. I figured a bedside phone stand would be pretty nice, so I whipped one up in Rhino: |
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Due to the accelerated printing on the shop's printers to get everybody's prints finished on time, the stand turned out pretty poorly...
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Luckily for me, my roommate has a 3D printer in our room... this gave me the freedom to experiment with tons of other prints. So, I started trying to create a phone case. I started by downloading the cad of an iPhone Xs Max. In Rhino, I extracted just the body of the phone, removing the display and buttons. I then enlarged this casing slightly so the phone could (theoretically) fit into the casing. To turn this 3d surface into a 3d, solid, printable body, I offset this casing by 1mm to make a 1mm-thick case. To make the button holes in the case, I extracted the geometry of each of the buttons and extruded a body from them, using this to cut out segments of the case body. |
The cad of the iPhone with which I started. A timelapse building one of the cases. |
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Now came the fun part: printing! |
Printing the first case. 
Printing the first layer of the case. 
Printing one of the top layers of the case. |
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The supports printed for this case seemed to be thicker than the walls of the case itself... It took a bit of time to carefully remove them. |
The finished print on the printer bed, including the raft seen around the case and the supports seen on the top edge of the case. 
All of the supports attached to the case |
more printing! | |
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Since this process was so easy, I decided to make a couple case designs! I first started by making one with my last name on the back. |
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I also thought it would be cool to cut out some tesselation pattern on the back of the case. Here's how I made the design: |
Designing the tesselation case. 
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I made another iteration of this case and ended up with four beautiful cases that don't fit my phone!
Since the PLA used to print these cases is so rigid and brittle (when this thin), I actually broke one case trying to force my phone into it... I might try to print some of these designs out of TPU, a more flexible and durable 3d-printable material. Stay tuned! |
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scanning | |
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I first attempted to take a 3d scan of my iPhone, but the scanner was extremely confused by the thin device. So, I settled with a scan of my head! |
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