Bringing it Together

Paper playtesting with our advisors!

So I can’t tell you a lot about what we are working on for HP, but I can tell you that we are concepting a set of tools that could be integrated with their current 3D printer. Since we are going to school for Entertainment Technology, the four of us wanted to find a fun and creative way to show off these tools, and what better way than to create a game! So we have created a physical board game out of 3D printed pieces that utilize the different tools we are developing. Having said that, I can’t really show you too many pictures of the game itself, in case you figure out all of our secrets! It is also important to note that the game is not the primary deliverable for our project and should not be judged as such.

The game is called Mind Your Manors (oh what a pun!) and is played with 2 teams of 2.  Each team has their own Victorian manor house with 8 different rooms that they must put together how ever they want. The objective is to collect a complementary set of weapons (aka. gun, gunpowder, and bullets) and kill the head of the other house.There are 16 objects hidden around both of your manors: 12 are various weapons, 3 are detrimental to your progress, and 1 is a wild card. Teams wander in and out of rooms in both houses looking for these hidden objects. Once a team has collected a complete set of weapons, they must make their way to the bedroom of the opposing team’s house to carry out their sinful deed.

Emiliano going in for the kill!

And that’s about all I can tell you, without getting into details. The point is, it is a fun, creative way to show off our project and we hope to play with some representatives from HP next week during softs. Maybe someday Mind Your Manors will make it to market….

Halves X 2

Over the past 2 weeks we’ve given not one but TWO ”halves” presentations. I say ”halves” because due to scheduling conflicts, these presentations fell after the halfway point in the semester.

Our first presentation was to the faculty at the Media Dome, and served as our official ETC ”halves presentation”. Although the audience was smaller than the average ETC presentation audience, we got a lot of interesting questions and points of advice. It was actually quite nice to have an extended Q/A session!

Our Media Dome presentation turned out to be a great excuse to practice and elicit feedback for our second big client presentation. At our first client presentation, we pitched several of our initial ideas and were able to get a better sense of where to take our project. This second one was meant to be a check-in to show HP how our ideas developed and our progress so far. In addition to showing off our work, explaining our project schedule and discussing our challenges, we also had to make it clear why and how our ideas could benefit them. So after adjusting our slides and polishing our lines just a little bit more, we headed off to HP early Monday morning (November 14th).

Overall our second presentation went very well! The people at HP were very happy with the progress that we’ve made so far and can’t wait to start playing with the prototypes that we are working on! (man, that’s a tease if I’ve ever heard one! We’ve done all this cool stuff but can’t tell you what it is!) So now we’re back to the grind– making the best use out of our remaining time!

Dragon Attack!!

…so unfortunately we haven´t been able to post as much as we would like. Hopefully we’ll be free of his fiery breath and grotesque stench soon enough!

Ok, truth– we are under a strict Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), so we can’t talk about our progress past a certain point, or post our adviser newsletters. Unfortunately, we have run out of most of the general content, since we are working hard on our project deliverable, but we will try to post more pictures before the end of the semester (that don’t give away our secrets!).

Wash Day

As we’ve discovered, 3D printing opens up a new world of possibilities in terms of seamlessly printed and pre-assembled objects. We can create working hinges and joints, objects within objects, and complex designs that before had to be individually created and then put together.
Unfortunately, a lot of these complex pieces cannot be used right out of the printer– they need to go into a special washing machine, aka the Support Removal System, that dissolves the support material necessary to make that piece.

Our washing machine lives in the boys’ bathroom, one floor below our project area. Luckily the bathroom has been turned into a storage closet, so the only other people who have access to it are the building janitors. We had several issues hooking up the SRS, since it was a prototype and didn’t exactly match the washer in the manual HP provided. One of the biggest issues was that it didn’t really work. We would put things in and 6 hours later they would have just as much support material as before. After several days of trouble-shooting and exchanging emails with the support team at HP, we decided that there was something wrong with the washer, and not necessarily with the way we were trying to use it. So last week we got a new washer, that actually looks like the picture above! And best news of all… it works! These are some of our creations that really didn’t work without the help of a functional washer:

Letter-based Rubix Cube (designed by qijie on Thingaverse)
David’s Crazy Balls

Even when the washing machine works, it still takes a decent amount of time (between 3 and 12 hours) to dissolve all of the support material. So, after learning how hindering the washing process can be, we are looking into different printing methods that don’t depend as much upon layers and layers of support material. How can we minimize production time– from the time we press print to the time when our object is ready to use?

Look What’s Cooking Part 2

Take a look at what we’ve got running in the printer!

Interlocking puzzle pieces and pre-assembled hinges?  Dani has put her new 3d modeling skills to use by prototyping different geometric patterns for assembly, and Matt has been busy testing printed hinges and locking systems.  We can’t really say what we’re working on, but having the ability to test designs within hours is pretty sweet.

We have  run into a couple of hard learned lessons along the way.  The support material on one of the parts separated from the base and curled up towards the print head.  The result was an interesting texture, but ultimately unwanted for consistency.  We have also had some issue with removing support material with the supplied washer.  It will take more tests to figure out the best dimensions and clearances of the pre-assembled parts.

 

3D Scanning Basics

In our quest to design a novel interface method for the 3d printer, we have tried incorporating a scanner into the mix.  We have been exploring various hardware and software solutions to meet our needs. Here are some of the basic principles of 3d scanning, and some fun apps we tried for the iPhone.

Structured Light:

The system projects a known pattern of light onto a scene.  A camera then interprets the deformation of the pattern to determine the depth of each point in the grid.  This develops a 3d dimensional point cloud which can be used to create a mesh.

Laser Scanning:

There are two types of laser scanning available for use.  Time of flight uses a laser rangefinder to determine depth of surfaces by emitting a pulse and recording the time it takes that pulse to return.  This method is capable of working at large distances, and is best suited to large geometry like buildings.

Triangulation uses an active laser field as well.  The laser projection can be a point or a line, and is swept across the desired geometry.  An offset camera determines depth based on where the laser registers in its field of view.  Triangulation is better suited for short distances, and capturing detail in smaller objects.

iPhone 3d Scanning:

There are two apps that currently provide a 3d scanning solution.  Trimensional relies upon a structured light process to reconstruct your face as a 3d model.  It only takes one view to create a mesh, and requires a dark room for the process to work.  After turning the brightness on the iPhone all the way up and placing it close to your face, the app flashes a pattern on your face and uses the camera to record the deformation in the pattern.  The process is not very robust, and breaks down when something reflects light back to it.  This is most noticeable from the eyes, but can also be a result of oils on the skin.

The second app is iFace3d, which relies upon a video capture process to create the mesh.  The process involves a tedious sweep around the subject´s face to capture the details.  The movement is easy to fumble on, and requires an optimal set of lighting and contrast conditions for the algorithms to work correctly.  The data is then sent to a server and available to download as a 3d model shortly after.

With both applications, there is no way to create a closed 360 degree mesh.  While novel in application, there is no control over the point cloud or the capture process, and is unsuitable to our needs.

Learning How to Model

Some of us on the ¿Plástico? ¡Fantástico! team have never really touched a 3D modeling program before (cough….Dani….cough) so we´ve been looking into different digital modeling techniques to get an idea of what is intuitive and what´s not. Some people, who are more familiar with digital modeling, have gotten used to the interface and how to manipulate an object on a computer screen, but the learning curve is pretty steep.  Since one of our project goals is to create something that would attract new audiences to the world of 3D printing, we wanted to do some testing with a naive user. How does a person who is unfamiliar with digital modeling interact with the interface? What do they expect to happen?

The image above is the beginning of a spaceship that I (Dani) have been modeling in 3ds Max, using the ever so helpful Digital Tutors tutorials. One of the things I had more trouble with is a good sense of depth. Sometimes in the digital realm it is difficult to tell where an object is being placed in relation to another object. Another challenge was creating internal parts to a 3D model– how deep does this hole go? Is the lip of the engine angled or warped? There were several times when I wanted to mold the spaceship out of clay or playdough, to control some of the finer details.

One of the great things about the 3D printer is that it allows you to touch the object that was at one point only digital. You can feel indentations and how pieces attach to each other. As someone that is new to digital modeling, being able to see and touch an object is not only a great step in not only the learning, but also in the general creation process. With the help of 3D printers, I can print out my object during different phases of the design process to get a better idea of what it looks like and how it is put together.

Coming soon: 3D printed spaceship!

Look What’s Cooking

Take a look at what we’ve got running in the printer!

We finally got a crossover cable so that we can hook our dedicated computer and get some of our own .stl files printed! We ran a few default test files to be sure the machine worked, was calibrated, etc, but here’s the first experiments with uploading content of our own creation. Look familiar?

Update: If you want to skip the process, you can go ahead and see the finished product! It printed beautifully, and was the easiest of all the prints so far to remove from the support material base. There were no hangups with our file creation, and even with the interface in Spanish, Matt was able to get it going quickly and easily. Now for something a little more complex, as we continue exploring the magic of additive manufacturing!