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Thursday 25 November 2010
By Kaetemi on Thursday 25 November 2010, 19:08 - 3DP
Here's something for customizing your good ol' PC, personalized fan grills!
Links: Personalized Fan Grill 80mm, Personalized Fan Grill 92mm, Personalized Fan Grill 120mm, Fan Grill 80mm, Fan Grill 92mm, Fan Grill 120mm
Video review by CCReviews:
By Kaetemi on Thursday 25 November 2010, 18:55 - 3DP
So, last week I received a package that's dated next week. It contained a sample part from Stratasys printed on a Fortus machine. Looks pretty good and feels very strong as well.
Tuesday 23 November 2010
By Kaetemi on Tuesday 23 November 2010, 17:58 - 3DP
One problem with printing stuff in color using typical CMYK printing ink, is that it's often difficult to get the exact color you want. This color palette shows the color and grayscale range of the fullcolor prints offered by Shapeways. It contains a full hue gradient, to black, to gray and to white, as well as a black to white gradient, and the different base colors seperately. By scanning this color palette, and scanning another color on the same scanner settings, it should be possible to match the right color. The data available on the color palette should be enough to write a small piece of software that interpolates the entire color space in the print, and then get the required on-screen RGB for printing a specific scanned color in this material, which is something I'll work on in the near future.
One thing that is somewhat noticable, is the slight yellowish-ness of the white color. Plotting the hue values on the hue side a bit, shows how yellow/green is very saturated, while inversely the printed cyan is not as saturated as the original onscreen cyan. Note that this plot is heavily dependent on scanner type and settings, so observations may vary.
If you want to see for yourself what the colors look like, you can get one too.
By Kaetemi on Tuesday 23 November 2010, 17:21 - 3DP
Another thing I'm working on at the moment. This is a figurine stand designed specifically for prototype figures. It basically allows you to place pretty much any figure on it, by having pins that can be moved to different positions of the surface. The purpose of this is, obviously, to save money, as I won't need to print any stands for prototypes of unfinished figures.
As this is still a work in progress, it still has some issues. More specifically, with the printing of the pins. It seems my idea of having flexible pins didn't turn out that well, for two reasons. The first issue being that it seems 1mm pins have a fairly high printing failure rate. Interestingly Shapeways included the failed prints together with some extra ones that are properly printed. In the picture are supposed to be eight pins. The second issue, is that the pins are too flexible this way, and therefore don't hold on to the figure properly.
So, what I'll do next, is try to print a set of solid pins in the range of 1 to 4mm with difference of 0.1mm between each (making a nice total of about 30 pins), and see how that turns out.
By Kaetemi on Tuesday 23 November 2010, 16:57 - 3DP
I did some revisions to the 3d printed keychain, which I previously used to make the video with the hammer.
Received the new 3d print in the mail last week, and put it on the ring with my keys. At the time of writing this, it's still intact, with only some minor scratches that you'd normally have on any plastic keychain.
You can order one over at Shapeways for yourself, with picture and inscription of choice, doesn't cost much and shipping is included.
Monday 25 October 2010
By Kaetemi on Monday 25 October 2010, 22:31 - 3DP
The 3d print arrived! Here are some pictures of the figurine, which has a height of about 17cm by the way:
You can order your own copy of this print over at Shapeways now, http://www.shapeways.com/model/164604/figurine__hana___17cm_.html.
Sunday 24 October 2010
By Kaetemi on Sunday 24 October 2010, 11:42 - 3DP
Coloring test on Shapeways' White Strong & Flexible 3D printing material, using Winsor & Newton watercolors and Letraset ProMarkers. With watercolors it is possible to make soft gradients between colors, as well as sharp edges. Markers blend slightly, giving softer edges, and can be used to make gradients as well, similar to how they react on paper. Watercolors can be washed out of the printed object almost entirely using water, marker colors don't change at all under water.
Wednesday 20 October 2010
By Kaetemi on Wednesday 20 October 2010, 19:39 - 3DP
Here's the video where I fail to break the thing in two by hand, and therefore resort to a hammer. Spoiler: the printed thing does not survive. Printed by Shapeways in the material they call Full Color Sandstone. The color is printed 1mm deep, and at 3mm thickness it's quite strong enough for normal handling.
By Kaetemi on Wednesday 20 October 2010, 19:10 - 3DP
Alright, time for some more useful blog posts again. I went to the exhibition at IF a few days ago, and to some readings they did there this week.
On the first floor of the Budascoop, timelab was demonstrating some of the open hardware projects in 3D printing, including the MakerBot and a RepRap modified by Unfold to print in clay. Here's some HD footage.
Unfold's modified RepRap and some of the object's printed by it:
A picture of one of the MakerBots:
Some parts printed on the MakerBot in different colors of ABS, which you can buy from the MakerBot website.
The open source miniCNC developed by timelab.
Oh yes, and this is what the MakerBot was printing in the video, about 24 minutes were spent by the machine on making this thing.
Later this week, I'll also visit Interieur 2010 here in Kortrijk, so expect more pictures from that expo as well.
