3D Printing addition to this blog 💥

Wow its been over a year since I last posted on my blog, this year was super busy with my full time job, finishing my last year of psychology in collage and crazy busy family life, time just flies. So I didn't have much time for metal casting this year but I did find some extension to this hobby that I will probably incorporate into my future metal casting. Around Jan' this year I purchased my first 3D printing machine of Creality CR-10S,

 I did some printing this year and I would like to share with you some of the more interesting ones. Majority of my 3D printings I downloaded from Thingiverse web site, remixing some and  others I have created using the fantastic Tinkercad easy to use app for 3D design, electronics and coding. So long story short I am far from being an expert in relation to 3D Printing but I know more then what I knew last year ;-).

My most recent 3D Printing was of a Star Wars Rebel Escort ship (Remix) from the creator Colin 300zxcolin full credit goes to him for sharing the files. I felt ready to try a larger size print and it turned out awesome, I used white and grey filament and will probably spray paint it at some point in the future. On the left you can see the finished print. As a huge Star Wars and Star Trek fan I did some previous space ship prints but nothing compares to the scale of this one, I have replaced and added front swiveling cannons, swiveling missile launchers, turret tower guns (borrowed from the empire death star ㋡), Side missiles, round turrets, internal connections support and rebel alliance legs. The software that I use to scale/slice and prep all STL files is the amazing Cura software.

Another cool 3D print (credit to MakerBot for sharing the files) was a present for my father in law that is a huge fan of Jurassic park and is fighting cancer, the print of a T-Rex skull including the stand, I used a gold filament for the skull and grey for the stand and it turned out very well, the T-Rex looks very well decorating his sitting room now and most important made him happy ;-).

One thing I learned about this print is to make sure that there is a good infill % for small areas such as the T-Rex teeth that I had to super glue 2 of them after as I yanked them off with the support.

The print on the right is my pride and joy as this was the first experiment I did with Photogrammetry, I took 80 photos of a wooden statue - The Legend of the Yogi Man (Orang Malu) also known as “The Weeping Buddha” or “Shy Man Buddha". I had the wooden statue over 10 year in my sitting room and it was perfect opportunity to try the Photogrammetry with a nice round object. I used Autodesk ReCap Photo software to generate the 3D shape from the puzzle of images, when I saw it the first time it was like magic, taking something from the real world and replicating it into a 3D object that can be manipulated in size and other features.

 I experiment with a couple of prints and the best part there is no need for any support for this 3D printing and the final result is really cool, especially with high infill it makes the print feel heavy and chunky when holding it.

In the print below I tested Photogrammetry with another statue and it turned out ok but the details where not as good as the first single Yogi statue, I figure I had to take more images from more angles so the final 3D object is more complete.

I plan to try at some point next year to use some of the 3D plastic printings into metal casting, one of the main advantages of the 3D printing where before it took me hours to make for example a pattern of a sign now I can quickly design and print the pattern.