3D printers have arrived! Complex and beautiful objects are available at the touch of a button in our schools, libraries, or even our homes. Whether or not you have a 3D printer, learning how they work and how to design for them is the best way to be a part of this new industrial age. And the best part is it doesn't cost a penny to learn to design for them.
This book will teach you the things you need to know about 3D printers. Then, you will use the robust and free software, Blender, to follow step-by-step instructions through several planned projects. You will gain the tools, techniques, and skills you need to make your own projects that you can print by yourself on a 3D printer near you and share with others online to print around the world.
Chapter 1, 3D Printing Basics, will help you understand 3D printing basics, types of 3D printing, and how FFF printers work.
Chapter 2, Beginning Blender, will introduce Blender, how to set it up, and some basic and mid-level functionality. Knowing the content of this chapter will get you over Blender's infamous learning curve and provide the basic knowledge and reference necessary for following along with future projects.
Chapter 3, The Octopus Pencil Holder, building this simple project, an octopus pencil holder, will involve simple selection techniques and modification commands of basic shapes in Blender's Edit mode, and applying modifiers to soften and combine shapes. This technique alone can be used to make an unlimited number of cool things once mastered.
Chapter 4, Measuring Basics, mentions how it is very important that accurate measurements must be made when planning and applied to the modeling of a 3D object. In this chapter, we deal with different techniques of taking measurements: measuring with a ruler or calipers, the grid paper trace method, and 3D scanning.
Chapter 5, An SD Card Holder Ring, walks you through the process of making a cool 3D printed project—an SD card holder.
Chapter 6, Sculpting the Face of the Sun, teaches you how to use the sculpting tools in Blender to transform a basic shape into a complicated design.
Chapter 7, Cutting a 3D Jigsaw Puzzle, further modifies the model created in the previous chapter by creating the puzzle pieces and then applying their shape that to the sculpted model model to create the individual pieces, combining two of Blender's powerful editing styles to create a finished product.
Blender has these minimum system requirements:
A 32-bit dual-core 2-GHz CPU with SSE2 support
2 GB of RAM
A 24-bit 1280×768 display
A mouse or trackpad
OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics with 512 MB of RAM
This book is for anyone with an interest in 3D printing and some basic computer skills. Whether you own a 3D printer or not, you can design for them. You will need Blender, a free 3D tool, and this book. With a little creativity, one day you'll hold in your hands something designed with a computer.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: Windows and unsure, just choose the MSI package option.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: Locate the Blender download button on the main page for the latest version of Blender and click on it.
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We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/3DPrintingDesignsFunandFunctionalProjects_ColorImages.pdf.
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