3D Scanning and Printing

Design

Orginally, I wanted to design some sort of wallet or part for my final project. I wanted to make some sort of trendy design like this clutch wallet. But unfortunately it was not a tangible design due to the number of supports that would be necessary around the elliptical design pieces.

Instead, I decided to try to make some cool geometric shapes. Once upon a time, I was a student in computational geometry, so I revisisted those past shapes. One of my favorite things are honeycomb shaped objects and figures. I have a few hexagon-shapes vases hanging my room, and I also have a few wire shelves in the same shape.

I was inspired by these honeycomb planters. I went ahead and tried to replicate the design in OpenSCAD. The file is available here and some screen shots are below.

Printing

Now, I had to do several prints to get it right. Unforunately, I had to be away for most of the week at the IEEE conference on data science and analytics, so I was able to be there for the first couple tries, but not for the final (successful) print.

Attempt 1

From the OpenSCAD file, I exported the file to an .stl file, available here and set up a print with a few colleagues.

The job was estimated to take 12 hours, so I returned the next morning to check on the print. Unfortunately, I discovered that the printer re-booted.

And it happened to re-boot right before my job was to print. So I got a couple prints that were VERY close to being done.

So, it was time to try again!

Attempt 2

I set up another print (and crossed my fingers that the printer wouldn't boot mid print!).

Unfortunately, the same thing happened.

Attempt 3

Success! Pictures coming soon!