All articles in 3D printing

The 8mm film scanner (Telecine) project, part 3 – Printed parts

Now it’s time to see the parts that I had to print to make this thing work. The list is … More The 8mm film scanner (Telecine) project, part 3 – Printed parts

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Printing the scanner frame, part 2

So far so good – we have the scanner base and the vertical arcs.

The turntable consists of 12 pieces of a circle, 30 degrees each, and with a 3mm thickness overall and a 6mm edge and center.

Turntable, 2 slices
Turntable, 2 slices

Continue reading Printing the scanner frame, part 2

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Printing the scanner frame, part 1

General design

Now that the scanning works, it’s time to explain the design of the tool. The size of the finished system of course makes it impossible to print it with any current 3D printer available to me, but even with MiniFactory’s 15 x 15 cm build table, it is doable. I wanted to have a 30 cm diameter turntable, and a 60 cm diameter frame base so as to have space to shoot objects bigger than 15 x 15 x 15 cm. The turntable is printed in 12 parts, assembled with screws, just like the arcs. I didn’t want to use glue, even if ABS is easy to build with glue. There are a couple of other parts too, like the cup below the turntable on which it revolves, and the three vertical arc mounts. There is a small triangular part at the top to assist in fixing the top arcs together, and that is done with a bundle strap. It’s easier than using screws and works just as well.

I modeled all parts in Blender, exported to STL and printed on my three Minifactories. I wanted to keep the design as simple as possible, and recycle parts so as not to have to change the printing setup every time a part was finished. Therefore the base arc and the three vertical arcs are of the same parts, and as ABS flexes a little, the whole setup can be put together and held in position by a single bundle strap at the top of the arcs. Let’s see the parts in detail.

Continue reading Printing the scanner frame, part 1

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Trebuchet, part III – moving parts

Now that the frame is complete and ready to print, as seen in Part 2, it’s time to do the moving parts. This is a very good place to show you the Blender 3D Cursor in operation, because I will not be designing with exact dimensions, but rather with exact locations and approximate dimensions.

The 3D cursor is the thing that moves around the screen, when you click the left mouse button. You can place it with nice precision, when you use the views that are flat, ie. Top, Left, or Right, because then the cursor moves in only two dimensions. Placing the cursor in the User Perspective view is really hard, unless you snap the cursor onto something – most of the time it is not even possible. I’ll show you what I mean.

Continue reading Trebuchet, part III – moving parts

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Trebuchet, or counterweight catapult, part II

I will now try to take you through the design of the trebuchet which has been shown in Part I of this post. This description that follows is actually aimed at showing you how in Blender all design is based on very simple starting points. The trebuchet frame is based on a single circle, the hole in which the main axis will eventually be placed, with a diameter of one Blender unit. Around this circle I based an octagon with the same center, but with a diameter of three.

The first circle
The first circle

The octagon is an arbitrary decision. I could have taken a septagon or a nonagon, but decided to go with eight vertices. It looks like this when appended to the circle above: Continue reading Trebuchet, or counterweight catapult, part II

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Greetings from Denmark

This blog entry comes from Copenhagen. Our university, Haaga-Helia, has for ten years been involved in an international IT seminar for students, and this year’s seminar is #9 in the series (2013 was such a messy year for all participating universities that we decided to skip it that year). The other schools are Cphbusiness in Copenhagen, Universidad Europea de Madrid from Spain, and a new entry this year, HES-SO from Switzerland.

The structure of the seminar is always the same, as is the theme, “How to be an IT professional”. The seminar runs for a week, with every school hosting a day. Usually there is a lecture in the morning, and then a workshop before lunch to be continued into the afternoon. Many times we have had social events and a business visit, for example last year in Helsinki we took the Spårakoff beer tram and went to Remedy Entertainment to see how games are made. Continue reading Greetings from Denmark

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CeBIT Trade Fair 2015, Day 4 and closing notes

13:45

The weather kept up but there was a brisk breeze as we headed out to the Messe for the final visit. By now we had been to all the halls and seen all that was available, and the purpose of this day was to go and check out some things again.

I spent two hours checking the multitude of Chinese thingamajigs and whatchamacallits, most with Bluetooth if not gigabit LAN. It’s amazing what they have come up with, and were I in the market for importing USB connectors or cabling or selfie sticks, I’d have been in heaven. It was interesting as it was, don’t get me wrong. Like this Taiwanese window washing robot.

Continue reading CeBIT Trade Fair 2015, Day 4 and closing notes

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CeBIT Trade Fair 2015, Day 3

On Wednesday we hopped on the commuter train 8 again in the direction of Messe Nord. It’s very handy to have the hotel right by the railway station from which the trains leave for CeBIT and also for Hamburg tomorrow.

When I see men in lederhosen with traditional musical instruments, I can’t resist the urge to start this day’s blog with a video.

Continue reading CeBIT Trade Fair 2015, Day 3

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