3D Printing my NFT Collection

In my previous post I detailed my first efforts creating a 3D printable NFT collection. At that stage I had created all the 3D models and shared them on the OpenSea platform, but I hadn’t 3D printed any of them.

Well, now I have!

Having created and 3D printed countless voronoi and lattice structures, I knew this wouldn’t be a problem, however, I can certainly breathe a little easier knowing that the models are robust and suitable for even a basic FDM 3D printer. I used my old Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus for the 2 models pictured above, and while the PLA filament was a little stringy (has not been stored well), the result was good enough for a proof of concept. No support material was used, and the total print time was about 1.5 hours.

What’s most fascinating about this to me is that now these NFTs exist in both the virtual and physical worlds at the same time. I currently own the virtual models, confirmed on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, while also owning physical prints of this virtual information. For 0.05 ETH you can buy these 3D models, yet I still own a physical copy. This is where some people have a problem with NFTs, however, for me I think this is the same as what happens with art, music, movies etc. every day; ownership of the original might change, but people still own/trade/share copies. What’s important is that ownership of the original is clearly recorded as a contract (in this case on a blockchain), and can be tracked through time, with royalties paid to the creator each time it is sold.

Anyway, back to the 3D printing. I’m actually offering to send anyone who buys 4 or more of my NFTs 3D printed versions for FREE, anywhere in the world. However, I’m going to improve upon rough FDM prints and get them printed using selective laser sintering (SLS). All you need to do once you buy them is contact me via Twitter (@edditive) or directly here on my blog, show proof of purchase, provide your shipping address, and wait by your mailbox until they turn up. That way you don’t even need a 3D printer to enjoy your NFTs in the real world!

– Posted by James Novak

Meshmixer Tutorial: Brake Lever Lattice

Recently I was asked to put together a Meshmixer tutorial for students studying additive manufacturing at Deakin University. The result: a 20min demo project to show you how to turn a pretty standard brake lever into something really cool for 3D printing. If you scroll through the tutorial section of this blog you will find many other demos of how to use Meshmixer, it really is one of my regular go-to tools.

Even if you’re not interested in the brake lever, through the tutorial you will learn to divide a single part into multiple segments, modify mesh quality, convert a part into a lattice structure, and join multiple parts together into a single part ready for 3D printing. You can apply any of these tools to your own project.

Enjoy.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Medal and Trophy

As a product designer focused on 3D printing in my job at the University of Technology Sydney, it was no surprise that I found myself being asked to design some 3D printed awards for the end of year 2018 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Research Excellence. And while not receiving an award (yet!), I think it’s even more fun to get to be designing them – besides, now I can print them out for myself!

I was asked to design 2 different awards which you can see pictured above. The first were a set of 3 medals, and my only brief was to have them 3D printed in metal, and for them be approximately the size of previous medals given out for the awards. I based my design on a spinner concept which I’ve previously printed, with an important feature being the cone-like details which hold this assembly together when printed as a single part. There is no support material required, with one of my goals being to highlight through the design the capabilities of 3D printing in metal. For recipients, my goal was to create something playful and engaging, rather than most medals which are kept in a case and quickly forgotten. Thanks to my friend Olaf Diegel at Lund University for printing these in aluminium and sending them to us in time!

For those familiar with metal 3D printing (Direct Metal Laser Sintering to be specific), you can probably guess there was a lot of manual post-processing of these medals to remove the base supports and polish the surfaces. Below you can see the medal as it comes out of the printer on the left (once cut from the build plate), and the final polished version on the right. All of the base support material you can see in the raw version had to be filed away while held in a vice, before going through a lengthy process of polishing. Slow, painful work, but you haven’t truly 3D printed in metal until you’ve gone through this process, it makes peeling away plastic support material from FDM prints seem like child’s play!

The second award was a trophy which also continued with the 3D printed assembly concept. My only brief for this design was for it to be printed on our own HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printer, which is very similar to SLS printing. Many of us have seen the “ball in a ball in a ball” type of prints which are often shown at 3D printing expos and events, and I built off this to incorporate a lattice frame to contain the balls. The basic design was done in Solidworks, however, the balls were just solid spheres at this stage. I then exported them into Meshmixer in order to apply a lattice structure to them, using 2 different geometries. All parts were then imported into Meshmixer in order to export them as a final fully assembled file ready for printing.

A little bit of laser cutting and timber work by a colleague really helped bring the design to life, and again, the trophy encourages interaction and play. Congratulations to the winners and finalists, I hope you enjoy your awards as much as I did creating them. With any luck I might get to design them again in 2 years and bring one home myself for real! 😉

– Posted by James Novak

A 3D Printing Workflow with Free Software

One of the challenges for designers (beginner and advanced) creating objects for 3D printing is finding software capable of doing the complex things we enjoy seeing in 3D printing news and exhibitions. There really doesn’t seem to be one program capable of doing it all, and this has been re-emphasised to me during my recent studies at MIT and a visit to Autodesk. However, there is some good news: if you’re able to quickly learn software, you can find an increasing number of freebies that seem to be specialising in small aspects of the workflow, which you can move between to create complex designs.

This tutorial will show you how I used completely free software to create a complex object during my time in the MIT course “Additive Manufacturing: From 3D Printing to the Factory Floor” as part of a group project, and is actually very quick once you become familiar with the programs. This particular design combines a hollow object with an internal lattice structure suitable for SLA printing on a printer like the Form 2 from Formlabs, which is what was used for the translucent version in the photo above. The white version in the background is a cross-section view of what is going on within the SLA print.

Step 1: The Overall Form

There are loads of free programs to use for creating 3D models – Tinkercad, Sketchup, Openscad, Sculptris, Fusion 360 (if you’re linked to an educational institution)… there are many more and you can certainly use your favourite. For this project, I actually used Onshape for the first time, which runs completely in the cloud (so no software downloading or limitations on computer operating systems/specifications). If you are at a school or university, you can get a free license. It works very similar to Solidworks or other high-end CAD packages, so if you are familiar with sketches and features, you will pick it up very quickly.

Basically, whichever CAD software you use, you want to create the overall shape of your object. In this case, I created an organic tear-drop shape using a “loft,” and cut a section out of the back so that it would clip onto a desk and act as a bag hook (part of the MIT design challenge).

Step 2: Make it Hollow

Many CAD programs will allow you to “shell” your design, making it hollow inside. However, if you can’t find the tool, or aren’t getting good results, we can do this in the next piece of software. But first, export your solid file as a STL (and if you managed to shell it in this step, export a STL of the hollow version as well and skip the rest of this step. You will still need a solid version for the lattice process).

The next free program, which I think is a must for anyone with a 3D printer, is Meshmixer. It allows you to edit the normally un-editable STL file format, and I have previously written tutorials about how to do download files from Thingiverse and combine them in creative ways or add your name to a downloaded part.

If you weren’t able to hollow out your design previously, click on Edit>Hollow and set your wall thickness. Just like that, your solid object is now hollow, and can be exported as a STL.

A note for SLA printing:

When using the Form 2 3D printer for the first time, I was surprised to learn that the PreForm software doesn’t allow for the user to specify infill patterns in the same way that is commonly done with FDM printing. That is what created the need for this custom lattice infill, and this tutorial. So, being a liquid resin printer, the final important step is to add drainage holes so that the form doesn’t end up completely full of liquid, and errors don’t occur during printing.

Meshmixer again has this function built in. While in the Hollow tool, you will have the option to “Generate Holes” and manipulate their location. This is really important, as you won’t be able to do it again later once your hollow and lattice are combined (unless you’re familiar with the boolean commands in Meshmixer and manually add a cylinder from the Meshmixer menu to use as a cutting tool).

Step 3: Creating a Lattice

Lattices and 3D printing are best friends. But creating a lattice in many CAD programs is close to impossible, usually requiring advanced skills and a computer that can handle very large patterning features. nTopology Element is a free program that will dramatically simplify the process for you – simply load a STL file, choose a lattice pattern, and boom! your object is now a lattice. But let’s go through it a little more slowly.

1. Import your solid STL file into nTopology Element.

2. On the top menu, click Lattice>Generate

3. In the pop-up, you can play with the lattice patterns (called “Rules”), the size of each lattice volume, and click Generate to get a preview. When you’re happy with the result, click on Apply.

4. You will notice that the result has the lattice coming outside of the original object. This is because only whole lattice volumes are used to fill the object, rather than automatically being trimmed to fit. So we must do this manually. In the top Edit menu, click on the Trim tool. A new pop-up will appear, asking you to select the Lattice geometry and the Trim Volume (original model), which you can select from the drop-down menu on the left. Click apply and the lattice will be trimmed to fit perfectly within your original design.

5. At this point, the lattice is made up of vectors – they have no volume. So the next step is to use the Thicken tool on the top menu to provide a diameter to your lattice.

6. Lastly, the thickened lattice needs to be turned into a single mesh that can be 3D printed. The Mesh button (where it says Interchange on the top menu) will join everything together and give you a single mesh. In the drop-down menu on the left, you can now right-click on the mesh, and click on export to get your STL file.

Step 4: Bringing it all Together

The free version of nTopology won’t let you stitch multiple files together, however the Pro version will if you ever end up with the need for a full license. So back to Meshmixer to bring it all together ready for 3D printing.

1. Import the hollow STL and lattice STL into Meshmixer (when you click on import for the second file, use the Append option).

2. You will notice that the ends of the lattice stick out from your object. There are 2 ways to correct this: Option 1 is to use the sculpt tool with the “Flatten” brush to go around and push the ends of the lattice inside of the object boundary – it’s just like pushing clay.

Option 2 is to ever so slightly reduce the scale of your lattice. With the lattice selected in the pop-up Object Browser window (on the right of my window), click on Edit>Transform and you can either manually manipulate the scale, or more accurately type in the reduction in the transform window (with the uniform scaling option ticked). You should only need a small reduction until the lattice fits just inside the outer skin of your object.

3. By turning off the hollow part in the Object Browser, but keeping it selected, you will get an X-Ray view into your object to check if the lattice and hollow part are intersecting. This can help with any final alignment. Remember; you want the lattice touching the solid shell, but not poking through so it’s visible, or loosely floating within the hollow.

4. In the Object Browser, [shift]+click to select both parts at the same time. A new window will appear that will allow you to Boolean Union or Combine both parts together, creating a single object.

5. Export the final STL and you are ready for 3D printing.

Step 5: Getting Creative

Once you get a bit of experience with this process and some of the other tools in Meshmixer, your imagination is the limit! You can really begin to play with different combinations of solid and lattice structures depending on the result you want. Have some fun and feel free to share any of your own creations in the comments section.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Skull and Titanic

It’s only now that I see these prints together I realise the message it must send – Titanic, iceberg, sinking, skulls…. woops!

But seriously these are just 2 simple prints I used yesterday as a quick demonstration during a 3D printing workshop I ran for local High School teachers. Usually I’d have something of my own to print, but being so short on time with the end of semester, it was a good chance to use Pinshape and Thingiverse to quickly access files and download some simple items that I could at least use as gifts.

The skull is available on both Pinshape (click here) and Thingiverse (click here) depending on which platform you prefer using to download your files. I printed it at half the size, which the Up! Plus 2 handled with no problems despite the delicate voronoi structure, making it a great example of what the printers can do. It’s not much larger than a golf ball at this size, and the file comes with the support structures built in, with almost nothing to pull out from inside the skull except a few fine pieces.

The Titanic and iceberg are only on Thingiverse (click here) and printed at their original scales again on Up! Plus 2 printers. There’s some nice little details on the Titanic to make it seem realistic, and it makes a fun little desktop piece for any fans of the Titanic, of which I know one in particular! Looking back it would’ve been really nice to do a 2-tone print, swapping the black filament for white as it got to the deck about half way through – maybe next time. But at least the iceberg is white.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printing a Section of FIX3D

After my previous post 3D printing a bracelet from Nervous System, these prints of a section of my 3D printed bike ‘FIX3D‘ follow on nicely; they also require (almost) no support material, and I’ve used the same 2-colour effect using some fluro green filament. With a few talks coming up where I’m unable to physically take the completed bike (since it’s on show in Belgium for Materialise) these will help give people an understanding of what it looks like in 3D, and also allow them to touch it and feel the lattice structure.

A few little errors and that pesky ‘slipping’ effect showing up with my Up! Plus 2 printer, but nothing major worth stopping the printing process for. One of the sections had enough of a slip (about 5mm) near the end that I had to slice the section away after printing and glue it back in its proper position. You wouldn’t even notice unless looking very carefully though. If you’re attending RAPID in a couple of weeks I’ll see you there with these and some other bits and pieces!

– Posted by James Novak

Meow… 3D Printed Cat

After the stresses of getting my new Solidoodle Press 3D printer working over the last week, it’s nice to jump back to the faithful Up! Plus 2 for a simple print. This design was downloaded from Thingiverse, you can also get one by clicking here. It’s also a bit of fun taking photos of the result!

I will admit the print didn’t come out perfectly – there was a bit of a skip about half way through, resulting in a gap just below the neck. I’m not sure what caused this error, but the small amount of support building inside the cat to support the top of the head also broke at about this time, so perhaps the nozzle collided with the print and fell out of sync? No major problem though, it’s only noticeable up close, and nothing a ribbon can’t fix. You can see what I mean in the below time-lapse photos, with the support broken and angled in the 3rd image, then removed by the 4th image. But the top of the head still printed without any problems, so the support wasn’t needed anyway.

Sure makes a good gift for someone, thanks Roman Hegglin for the design!

– Posted by James Novak

Tutorial – Faceted (Low-Poly) Shapes in Solidworks

Another design and another excuse to share some of my modelling process using Solidworks. This can be applied to far more complex forms to achieve that faceted or ‘low-poly‘ effect with as much dimensional control as you like. Of course there are a million ways to skin a cat (or model a Solidworks part) and this is just the best process I could think of for accuracy on this particular design I’m working on. Feel free to leave a comment about your own methods or tips, I’m no expert!

Step 1 Give yourself some orthogonal views of the overall shape you want to achieve. This includes the triangles that will be used for the facets. For this one I just used a front and top view.

Step 2 Create a 3D sketch and connect all your vertices. Of course you can move things around if you like, but connecting back to those first sketches you set up really helps control the 3D sketch, which are notorious for having a mind of their own.

Step 3 Create another new 3D sketch, and convert just 3 lines from the previous 3D sketch that forms a triangle. Exit the sketch and use the Filled Surface tool to create a flat 2D surface.

Step 4 Repeat until you have enough flat surfaces to define your shape. Always be on the lookout for a pattern in your design – any opportunity to use the Linear Pattern or Mirror tools will really save time, so in this example I’ve only had to model 3 surfaces which I can later reflect to generate the larger design. Then Knit the surfaces together. The coming steps are where there are a number of ways to proceed, including use of the Offset Surfaces tool or Thicken. However these always result in messy, uncontrolled edges, so I’m not a fan. Instead I have setup another 3D sketch, and drawn some lines back in the z-axis from the vertices of the knitted surface – this will determine the thickness of the part.

Step 5 Repeat steps 3 and 4 to create another surface that sits perfectly behind (or in front of) the first.

Step 6 On the front plane (or whichever plane is the primary view) convert the lines of the outside perimeter of the surfaces you’ve created. These can then be extruded into a large block – just make sure you continue beyond the surfaces you’ve created.

Step 7 Use the Surface Cut tool for both knitted surfaces, making sure you cut away the block in the right direction. You want to be left with a solid only between the 2 surfaces. In the feature tree you can then right-click on the knitted surfaces and hide them, leaving only the solid material on screen.

Step 8 The hard work’s over, now use the Mirror or Linear Pattern tools to expand your design. You can also add any other details (in this case some cut-outs) before using these pattern features.

As I said there are many ways to achieve this aesthetic, and many other programs that you can achieve faceted objects far quicker. But if like me you’re wanting specific control of the facets and dimensions (rather than simply taking a shape and reducing the poly count), this might be useful. Please leave a comment with any questions, or like the post so I know it’s been useful for you. Happy cadding (if that’s a word)!

– Posted by James Novak

Tutorial – Abstract Wireframe Lattice in Solidworks

While working on part of a new design for 3D printing I thought I’d capture a few of the key stages and put together a brief tutorial about how to create a complex-looking wireframe (or lattice) design. Who said Solidworks couldn’t do complex organic models?? (this article has been updated slightly on 2/12/2014 since I modified my process – that’s Solidworks for you, there’s always a million ways to achieve the same outcome. Some are just a little cleaner than others).

Step 1 is to setup some planes with sketches defining the rough shape of the object you want. This is important to get the overall size right and control the shape. By putting some planes at angles, this will increase the visual complexity rather than all planes parallel.

Step 2 is to create a 3D Sketch – then imagine you’re a spider and draw lines between vertices! Setting up the planes in step 1 means your 3D sketch will be easy to control (if you’ve tried 3D sketching without any guides you know how quickly it can get out of control).

Step 3 can be done in a number of ways depending how accurate you want to be, and how patient you are. The first part is the same no matter which option you go for – create a plane perpendicular at the end point of 1 of the lines (by clicking the line as the first reference, and the endpoint of that line as the second). Draw a circle on the plane with the line through the center. Give it a dimension, then right click on the dimension and ‘Link Values.’ Create a new name, which will allow you to draw upon the parametric capabilities of Solidworks as you move forward and link all dimensions together, meaning you can update 1 and the entire model will rebuild with this new diameter. Now you can either exit the sketch and use the ‘Sweep‘ function, linking up as many lines as you like, which will look OK but will result in sharp junctions at each vertex which even a fillet won’t perfect. Or if you are a bit OCD like me go 1 line at a time either as a ‘Sweep’ feature, or ‘Extrude‘ using the ‘up to vertex’ option to the endpoint of the line.

Step 4 is to repeat, repeat, repeat! This is also where the ‘Link Value’ becomes useful – when you sketch each new circle and add a dimension, just right-click on the dimension and go to the ‘Link Value’ option. There will be a drop-down menu where you can select the name of the dimension you created in the first sketch. This will link all the diameters together using a single dimension. You can keep the ‘Merge’ option checked, or un-check to leave each extrude as a separate body to combine at the end. Up to you, I usually merge everything as I go if possible (saves any surprises at the end).

Step 5 Once the framework is complete, the last step is to fill all those little joints between the cylinders. Simplest method if you are working in part mode is to sketch on one of the flat surfaces, convert one of the circles, then turn this into a semi-circle. This will allow you to do a 360 degree ‘Revolve‘ feature, filling any gaps in the joint. If you prefer you can complete this step after creating each cylinder so you don’t lose track. If you’ve modeled as separate bodies, you can now use the ‘Combine‘ feature to join all those individual pieces together as a single solid.

Hope that’s useful, I know it’s more time-consuming than some other CAD software out there, but it’s also extremely accurate. This model took about 2 hours to complete. Leave a comment if you have any questions, or share it around.

– Posted by James Novak

Merging Saves MB’s

If you’re keeping score you may know that I’ve been losing against the might of HUGE file sizes and failed 3D prints (check out the last attempt here). Looks like my luck is turning!

This is the truncated octahedron segment that was meant to print the other day, with an STL file size of 259MB. My hunch about turning the assembly into a part file and combining all the solid bodies (which takes at least half an hour!) has finally come good, with an STL file now less than half the size at 104MB. Happy Days 🙂

The issue has been one of overlapping geometry, which Solidworks seems to hate – rather than each truncated octahedron perfectly lining up, they are actually about 0.02mm away from perfection; a detail that has taken weeks of on and off experimentation to get right! So if you want my hot tip, stop trying to model so damn perfectly!

– Posted by James Novak