Tag Archives: Thingiverse

The Scan-O-Tron 3000: Bringing the World a New Form of Portraiture!

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Coney Island Scan-A-Rama is close to hitting 50% of of our funding goal, but we have only 10 days left! We really need YOUR help to get the word out to make out Kickstarter campaign successful!

Some new mentions this week:

With less than two weeks left we really need all the link love we can get, so anyone who has media connections please help get the word out! Secondly, anyone with any connections to event planners or fundraisers who might be interesting in offering 3D portraits at their event or gala, please send them our way- we need one or two high end supporters!

Now with no further ado, I wanted to address the open hardware aspect of the project. Its not the highest production value video I’ve ever made, but here’s a video that goes into the Scan-O-Tron 3000, the hardware 3D Scanning rig that I’ve been developing (which will be released on Thingiverse at the end of the campaign). This video is a little more technical- for the geeks out there- and is about the operation of the equipment, as opposed to my earlier post which was more about the experience of being scanned. For backers $20 and up I will also be releasing a video of my file cleanup routine in Netfabb Basic to you as a sneak preview before it’s available to the rest of the world. Enjoy!

Makers, you can already check out my Lazy susan design for full body scanning here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28454 , and download loads of sample 3D full body scans off my Scan-A-Rama collection here: http://www.thingiverse.com/fredini/collections/coney-island-scan-a-rama

Have a great weekend and please help make this happen!

3D Printing Tip of the Week: Print Your own Scan-A-Rama Figure

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There were a lot of folks I scanned at the Westport Maker Faire who wanted to come in and use the library’s 3D printer to print themselves out. If you don’t want to do that, you can always commission me to do a high quality print for you, but as promised I am putting up a quick tutorial on how to print one yourself.
Step 1- find your model to print
The first thing is to find your file and download it from the project page on Thingiverse. Your model will be a 3D .stl file. To prepare it for printing, it must be converted to instructions for a 3d printer. This process is known as slicing.
Step 2: Slicing
Because the library’s machines are Makerbots, we reccommend using Makerware software to prep files for printing. First, click the “Add” button and place the model on the build platform. The software has a move tool to bring it to the center if need be. Next, scale the model using the scale tool. My models are sized proportionally to someone 6’tall being ~144mm, so all my prints will print on a makerbot. Most kids are ~120mm give or take, so their files should be a good size as is. Because the library is a shared facility, we recommend sizing models to be between 110 and 120mm tall (Star Wars action figure sized). This will keep your print times to between 1 and 2 hours if you print at medium quality. Here you can see I am sizing this model to be ~ 115 mm tall:

Place-on-Build-Area

When you’re done placing and sizing, its time to hit the “make” button. Below you can see the print dialogue you will now see. First select the printer you are printing with- Replicator 1 or Replicator 2. Next select the quality settings. I recommend you use the default medium settings (A 120mm print should print in less than 1 1/2 hours).  My prints are high quality, .1mm layers, but these will often take as long as 5 hours to print so I don’t recommend this setting for in the library.
Some prints will need support turned on- for example: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:82843 needs support for the hands that are hanging down. If you need support, check the checkbox for support, but be prepared for cleaning the support off with an exacto knife later.
Finally, export the print file and load it on the printer. If the computer is attached to the printer, you can select the “Make it now” radio button up top, otherwise, select “Export to a file” and copy the file to an SD card that you put in the printer.

Export

Step 3: Printing

After you hit print,  watch the first few layers. You want to be sure that they stick to the platform. As long as the print adheres to the platform at the beginning, you should be good to go. Kick back and wait for the awesomeness to arrive- Good Luck!

Westport Maker Faire- First 3DPrint file posted!

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Andy- Star Wars TIE Fighter Pilot

Andy- Star Wars TIE Fighter Pilot

Last night I posted the first of over 100 scans I made at the Westport Maker Faire last Saturday. Tonight, I’m hoping to finish processing the files (I have over half of them cleaned up for printing already). Then, by the end of the week everything will be posted to the collection page on Thingiverse.

Link to Thingiverse Collection of all scans from Westport CT Makerfaire 04/27/2013