Month: December 2013

I knew nothing except what the printers looked like and what output they could produce before I started the course. I did not know the players in the game nor the major users of the technology. I did not know how to get started with the process. I did not know that CAD modelers were integral to the process. I did not know that individuals could get their products made through the major 3D printing companies. I did not know about the software that was available for the users. I did not know about the .stl and other files that were needed to be “read” by the 3D printers. I did not know that the printing companies would also handle order taking and shipping fulfillment for products made through them.

I did not know there was a community of designers available to create 3D models for your projects. I did not know about 3D scanning. What I learned, I shared with the class on the final presentation:

1. Software knowledge is King/Queen!
2. There will be more issues then you plan for.
3. 3D designing will be harder than you think.
4. Don’t get too attached to your design, you may have to change it.
5. Make sure you have time to process and fix your design.
6. Put your design through the software that will highlight the mistakes before you go to print.
7. The open source community and culture has many benefits. It provides opportunities for design help and problem solving.

My strengths were that I understood traditional manufacturing so I had a good basis of comparison and it contributed to my amazement with this course.

The advice I would give myself is to not try to be a designer. When I had my toy company, I hired designers. It is not a skill or talent you can learn easily and it is not a talent I have. I appreciate designers and know how to work with them. But, CAD design is extremely complex and requires a tremendous amount of knowledge, craft and time to develop.

I see creating an online 3D course. I am looking at Udemy.com for developing a short course. I also see myself having a 3D printed toy line by 2014. If that goes well, I will develop other products.

The reason I took this course was to learn about how to manufacture toys using 3D printing. I viewed it as a way to avoid all the old manufacturing process with which I was familiar. Namely, expensive injection molding, large minimum order quantities, warehousing of inventory, manufacturing in China and those long, dreaded flights to the factories, posting of letters of credit, sales call to major retailers, just-in-time shipping orders and 30-60-90 day payment cycles.

Then I read about 3D printing. It seemed to be everything traditional injection molding was not. It allowed for manufacturing only one product at a time. This technology eliminated one of the biggest cost and uncertainties in mass production: minimum production quantities. Moreover, multiple designs can be created and tested because the design process takes place in the software. It is the computer animated design (CAD) process that makes 3D printing so unique when compared to the traditional manufacturing process.

Production with 3D printing is accessible because of the services surrounding the industry that contribute to its adoption. When the speaker came from Shapeways, he explained that they have a community where 3D CAD modelers are available to work for hire on projects.

That was the information I needed in order to pursue my goal of creating 3D printed toys. All I had was a design and an idea. But, I was unable to take the concept to the next level. However, once I knew there was a community of CAD experts, I knew I would be able to develop the toy.

My work raises questions about mass customization and whether I will be able to market the toy allowing the words on the sign to change, and to offer a selection on the colors of the clothes.

For the larger community, if I am able to successfully manufacture the toys in the U.S. I will use that as a marketing tool and be able to evangelize this process to others. Now, when I talk about 3D printing the first reference most people have is that 3D is good for making guns. These toys and the publicity they generate can help change that.

The next step is to send the product to Shapeways and get a prototype and begin to test market the acceptance and audience for the toys.

Santiago wrote:
I have been taking care of an added issue I was not aware of due to my novice-ness with the specific area of 3D printing. I don’t know if you benefit from knowing certain technical details as a part of your 3D print learning course. But here I go :). I have consulted some experts in this Full Color Sandstone material and related matters, turns out that other materials would allow -in Shapeways company- to have objects overlapping. That is, one volume incrusted in the other. So, initially this weekend I got super happy, as I thought I was going to need to modify several areas and make what is called a boolean (of the ‘union’ type. Two meshes get joined physically by connecting polygons. Nothing is “loose” or not connected) or a weld of some sort. Seems in the case when you make another model in other material, this is not necessary. IE: The afro hair can be a separate object can be set over the model’s head, I would not need to join it. As I wouldn’t need for any other purpose 3D model (although depends on the targeted game or software) . Because, the Shapeways system, I think its software platform, performs a great automatic boolean union (there’s intersect or subtract boolean operations, too, in the 3D “language”. Union is the most common boolean, though). This saves tons of time.

Unluckily, the only material not allowing this is Full Color Sandstone. As it seems the textures color information gets lost with a boolean union. Or it did some time ago (they might have improved, certain artist told me) . Anyway, this, and the also recently discovered -by me- fact that a model cannot have more than 1 million triangles (triangular polygons, that is) in the Shapeways platform, has had me making lots of internal changes on the model. Visually you would not practically notice, indeed, non in the outside shell (in what we see) of the hair. 🙂

So, with this extremely helpful feedback about the FCS material, and some other tech aspects of Shapeways production, I’m quite more confident on what the model cannot have once sent to Shapeways. 🙂

Yes, texturing now should be a breeze, is the easiest part in this specific model. I would like to end it all today. 🙂

I hope I did not get too “techy” in this mail. Also, I hope it adds value for your 3D print learning course.

Me: I had to go look up “boolean.” I was familiar with it as a search term method when conducting specific research, but did not know it had a connection to modeling. This is what I read:

Bool·e·an
[boo-lee-uhn] S
adjective
1.
pertaining to or being a deductive logical system, as Boolean algebra, used to represent symbolically the relationships between sets, classes, and other entities.
2.
Computers. of or pertaining to a data type having two possible values representing “true” or “false.

I guess he’s talking about the data.

I wrote him back:

This information is very helpful. We are all writing blogs to outline our process with our personal project. I have been sharing our conversations with the professors and the students and will post this email as well.

Thank you for being so expressive and instructional!

I look forward to the next models.

I have been back and forth with Santiago regarding the hair on the Afro Babies. He has explained how difficult it is to design in the software and he switched to a different software package to get the look I was trying to get. Here is the exchange we have had:

Me: I had these Lego toys that have little Afros. They have the bumps that you started with, but there are many more of them. It may be difficult to recreate this in 3D. Therefore, some combination of the spikes and the bumps should work.

I appreciate all the work you are doing and the difficulty involved.

Thanks for your persistence!

Santiago: What I can do is reproduce some type of filament, curvy, thick pipes.

But actual thin hair, while it is possible in 3D software via plugins/added modules effects, it is not in 3D printed figures, with any material (not even hi detail ones). But specially, the multicolored stone, as I mentioned to you in its day, is very limited. It cannot do even slightly thin structures. And gravity and support strength are a real problem. In the guidelines, they explain to you that it is like making sand castles in the beach. Whatever would not be possible in that, wont be either with multicolored sandstone, as would get destroyed once they extract from the machine (later they apply like a a super glue adhesive)

So, we can, as much, do some sort of filaments, in the case the hair is not all left to 2D texture flat painting.

You might want to check these matters in their material guidelines page 🙂 :

http://www.shapeways.com/materials/sandstone-design-guidelines

There is important info not showing there, which is at the main info page:

http://www.shapeways.com/materials/sandstone

This also tells about how fragile it is. It is not going to break for time to time handling, thanks to the super glue, but is for example, not good for a table top game, is mostly a decoration piece.

I indeed might be extremely interested in, if you are so kind, that once you receive the model, might tell me how it feels, how strong it seems to be and all… As , for me as a modeler… and texturer, I have an edge, an advantage with most modelers there in Shapeways as many are not capable of texturing also (properly). But sadly this is the only material allowing it. Still …for deco purposes, they say it rocks.

I am producing a “multi style” head hair, so you can check several samples in the same head, so to make a choice of what we can do.

Me: Sorry I was not clear. I am not in New York now. I came to Maryland to visit with friends for the Thanksgiving holiday. When I get back I will try to sketch what I am thinking and scan it and send it to you.

In the meantime, I will see the section that you are changing and maybe it is what I am looking for.

I understand the constraints you listed and am sure we will find some compromise.

Thanks again for being so responsive.

Santiago: It’s been a bit of an issue to get the desired effect, as mostly I need to prevent issues when the molding proccess starts in their machines. Figures must be solids of certain characteristics, and this is limitting me in going for easier methods for the several hair versions. Finally I needed to make an export from Wings, and I have generated the full hair with Blender, using its METABALLS system. It was the best way to model it , and keep all time everything as one piece, and not make a nightmare of later on melting all. The thing is, we cannot do separated pieces for 3D printing of certain type. It’s be really tedious, as I have placed and configured each small metaball of “lego hair” individually… Quite a task… But am happy now 🙂 . It almost killed a i7 core with 8gb of ram and a good graphic card! 🙂 Half a million of triangles…

Good news: I just got it ready now, hair is done, and now I am going for the final thing: texturing.

It’s a huge file in modeling count, but my machine can deal with it more or less (+600 thousand triangles in the hair, lol) . Mostly as if hair is good (I really like it now, but I don’t know if you would, I really hope so!. I think it is completely in the line that you wanted in those lego samples: It’s hard for a better aproach, and in my view, it ended better than in those lego examples.)

The delay has been a mix of things: Yes, the hair styling, not reaching the point you exactly wished, was a bit of a slowing down factor, but is mostly that.. I am these late months making a living out of my artwork, as the only income source, so, when a project needs certain number of modifications, I do not charge for them, but I actually need to also attend the other projects as well, so to (er, pay the bills 😉 ) not loose them, and also for schedules. I am hoping to end it all today, so it will be good for your classes, as well. 🙂 Yes, there have appeared more obstacles than I thought, I mentioned you it was my first contact with real physical figure printing… The bigger issue here, and I can explain that in depth if you really wish so, is that I cannot make, as far as my little knowledge on 3D printing and materials go, figures built of several parts, or can, but it would involve certain extra complexities with their tech services. I am quite expecting issues when we do send this model to their services, because it often hapens, also I am novice in the specific matter, and also, the model has some singularities. But I am optimistic in the final result of all, and of course, I will be extremely helpful with you and the service to make this reach the desired output. Things can happen: They can reject the model, even several times, as once they examine the model they might estimate that issues would occure during the machine operation or another step. I will try to clean the model the best I can, and eliminate possible issues before sending, but still, these matters are expected. I’ll be there to change anything.

Not attaching here the shot as I need to do certain things first, but expect a final shot today 🙂

I am sorry for the delay, but this is going to end as a nice figure 🙂

Me:
Great to hear from you and that the problem was not me:) !

Looking forward to getting your next design.

Santiago: I’m a bit in a hurry right now, but so that you could check a bit of it… Is not the actual exact colors from the initial drawing that you sent me, as these are not textures yet, but actually just basic material colors. But to give an idea. In 3D, one can’t see volume in typical LCD screens if we set as black the hair color. In the final model, yes, it will be black, because in real life, the natural light wll allow to see the hair volumes and all.

As it’s no textures, this is why we yet don’t see the face (eyes, smile, etc) This will be in the texture. 🙂 The names that you want to go changing in the sign: textures, and very easy to add it 🙂

So, hair does not need to be dark brown, can be full black.

I am at step four of my original plan. I am pleased with the look and the progress.

Santiago is now going to start on the face.My plan is to mass customize the toy. I will make a boy and a girl figure and possible two hair styles, one bumpy and one spiky. The sign is where the customization will occur.

I will find out the limitations of how many characters can be printed in the space and allow people to write in those characters when they order. My vision is the Afro Babies will be holding “greetings”. Some may say “I love (or have a “heart” image) and add in a name. One may say “Happy Birthday _your name inserted____. Or “Get well, “Congratulations”, etc.

Since these will be 3D printed, each buyer can add their own words. I have already checked with the designer, such that the sign portion can be customized.