From Clay to the 3D Printer & Back Again

The latest addition to our 3D printing plan is an app called 123D Catch. What's that you ask? Well, its an iPad app that allows the user to photograph an object and then convert those images into a 3D mesh, ready for printing on our Makerbot 3D printer.

Take this clay sculpture of a dinosaur bird head for example. It was created in clay and will be fired in the kiln. While we were waiting for it to dry, we took a few (40 something) photos using 123D Catch. The app captured the images and converted them into a 3D image. Now we can export that mesh and print as many dinosaur bird heads as we want.  How cool is that! 

The images below are not the clay version but rather the 3D image that 123D Catch created.

View the bird in 3D online!


Click the first box in the window above to view the dino bird in 3D.

The next step was to export the mesh and import it into the 3D printer. We loaded the file into our Makerbot software, pressed the 'print' button and several (12ish) hours later, a 3D printed replica of our clay dino-bird head!

This 3D version is ready for a little clean up to remove the supports and then it can be painted and displayed with pride.

Meanwhile the clay version just came out of the kiln. This piece is also ready for glazing or painting or whatever direction the artists decides to go in.


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Creating and 3D Printing

We've started printing with our Makerbot 3D printer and we're learning a lot! The students have been using apps on the iPad including 123D Design and 123D Sculpt+. These apps let students either organize and combine forms to create new objects or manipulate the equivalent of virtual clay. In either case, the students are able to build unique things.

There is a little bit of a learning curve trying to understand how best to orientate an object to get the best print. Do we leave it standing up or lay it down? A lot of trial and error.. a lot of error.. but success too. Here is a look at some of the objects in various stages of printing...

from Virtual 123D to Literal 3D

This is the third test of our  Makerbot 3D printer and it's an important one. For this test I wanted to see if we could take a creature created in 123D Creature on the iPad and turn it into an actual 3D object.

It started a a virtual moose created using 123D Creature on the iPad. From the iPad we were able to export the mesh. The mesh was easily imported into the Makerbot software to prepare for printing.

The 123D Creature file was exported as a .obj file. Once imported into the Makerbot software, it was easy to rotate and scale. The software also allowed us to decide which way to rotate the creature so it uses the least amount of supports, saving filament. This is still something we're learning about.

The final result is this very cool little moose!

3D Printing on the Makerbot

Look at that! It's a shark! Pretty exciting, I know! OK maybe not that exciting if you don't know the backstory. So let me tell you a tale of the 3D printer.

Back in November I received an email from the folks in the Media Center. It was from Makerbot. They were holding a contest. Whomever had the most retweets that used the Makerbot hashtag would win a 3D printer. I decided to tweet and asked my students to retweet my tweet. 

We had a pretty good first day with around 200 tweets. In fact, we had more tweets that anyone. I started thinking, maybe we could win this thing. 

Then the next day, I saw that another school had passed us. The had over 250 retweets. I was like, on no you didn't! So again I asked the students to ask their friends to retweet...

We went from 200 to over 500 retweets in a day! Long story short, we won the printer! It came in a box a few days ago. This morning I decided to see if I could set it up. I did and it work! (See shark above).

Now the fun can really begin. Stay tuned to see what we build this semester.