Cadalyst on 3D Publishing

We spend a lot of time thinking about designs and the technology to print those designs, but what about the notion of publishing designs? Once a model is produced, what happens to that model? Is it kept in a folder somewhere? Is it published on the Internet? What happens to that model once it is published? Lacking any security mechanisms, it might become essentially public domain. Are there solutions?

Cadalyst recently took a very hard look at this issue, and actually tested products from seven 3D CAD vendors, including SpinFire Professional, Adobe Acrobat 3D, Myriad, XVL Studio Pro, Publisher3D Professional, Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition and eDrawings 2007 Professional. Their conclusion: there are indeed tools that can protect the intellectual property of your 3D models. No standards yet for doing so, but it can be done.

Via cadalyst

What Supports 3D Printing?

We're thinking not of financial matters here, but "matter matters". Specifically, the issue of printing overhangs. A 3D printer deposits material layer by layer - and there's kind of a major issue if there is nothing underneath the layer. Print media falls by gravity and your object doesn't quite look like it should. Bad.

The solution to the problem is to somehow provide temporary support structures that hold the overhanging material in place while the rest of the object appears. If designed correctly, the overhang will be connected to the rest of the object and all is well after the temporary supports are removed.

But what are these supports, and where do they come from? We read an interesting discussion on the RepRap forums, whose readers pondered the question of overhangs exceeding 45 degrees. A variety of solutions were proposed, demonstrating that this issue has not yet been solved satisfactorily. One point we agree with, however, was the idea that the object designer should not be responsible for determining the support structure. Designers should create beauty or utility; supports are work best done by software.

Via Forums.RepRap.Org

3D Print War Rocket is Fail

Hydra's Lair is the blog of Matt Beauchamp, an art teacher with "a passion for collecting, painting and gaming with miniatures." He's been working on miniatures for a pulp sci-fi game, "War Rocket". But unfortunately this happened:

Since the War Rocket ships are smooth and lack the ‘greeble’ of Star Wars style ships, the surfaces need to be extremely smooth and free of the texture left by the 3d printer. We’ve had problems making silicon molds since rapid prototyping (RP) resin leeches chemicals that cause the molds to cure improperly. This resulted in very bumpy, porous castings.

What did Hydra Miniatures do? They took their rapid prototyped master prints to a jeweler who used his normal techniques to produce bronze castings that can be buffed to perfection.

This scenario demonstrates the current state of affairs of 3D printing; it just doesn't yet work for every situation. The same could be said of early dot-matrix printers years ago. Remember them?

Via HydraMiniatures

3D Yoyo

"Have you ever made a Yoyo with a 3D printer", asks bollweevil in this Yoyonation forum discussion. Yoyo enthusiasts know their yoyos, and many custom build them. Now, they consider using a 3D printer to do so. The result is interesting, as YoMattSta replies:

"Yes, I have. I made 2 yoyos on a 3d printer. Don't waste your time."

What? How could this be? And he's not the only one with this viewpoint. The comments all come down to this: the 3D printed yoyos are good as a prototype, but are not sufficiently durable for ongoing use. We suspect very high precision is required to produce the best quality yoyo, and it may be that commonly available 3D printers just aren't up to that standard yet.  

Another interesting observation results from YoMattSta's note on his 3D Yoyo (pictured): 

NOTE: The weight rings are in there because the plastic that the proto is made out of is very light.

This points out another issue with 3D printing today: weight can be very important in some applications, particularly when then printed object has motion. Perhaps Objet's multi-material Connex500 could be used to produce weight effects by mixing dense and light media?

Via Yoyonation and Yoyonation