Book Image

3D Printing Designs: Fun and Functional Projects

By : Joe Larson
Book Image

3D Printing Designs: Fun and Functional Projects

By: Joe Larson

Overview of this book

3D printing has revolutionized the way that global industries conceptualize and design products for mass consumption. Considered as the next “trillion-dollar” business, every industry is in the race to equip its personnel with techniques to prototype and simplify complex manufacturing process. This book will take you through some simple to complex and effective principles of designing 3D printed objects using Blender. There is a comprehensive coverage of projects such as a 3D print-ready octopus pencil holder, which will teach you how to add basic geometric shapes, and use techniques such as extruding and subdividing to transform these shapes into complex meshes. Furthermore, you’ll learn to use various techniques to derive measurements for an object, model these objects using Blender, organize the parts into layers, and later combine them to create the desired object with the help of a 3D printable SD card holder ring design project. The final project will help you master the techniques of designing simple to complex puzzles models for 3D printing. Through the course of the book, we'll explore various robust sculpting methods supported by Blender to create objects. You’ll move, rotate, and scale the object, and manipulate the view. You’ll edit objects with actions such as bends or curves, similar to drawing or building up a clay structure of different shapes and sizes. By the end of the book, you will have gained thorough practical hands-on experience to be able to create a real-world 3D printable object of your choice.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
3D Printing Designs: Fun and Functional Projects
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


3D printing is cool and allows the creation of fantastic and detailed objects without needing much interaction with people after the design is done. But designing for 3D printing is a lot like designing for any other type of manufacturing. It helps to know a bit about the process involved and design with that process in mind.

Fused filament fabrication 3D printing, or FFF for short, is one of the oldest, most mature, and cheapest forms of 3D printing, so this series will focus on designing for it. It involves melting a plastic filament and drawing the object layer by layer, with each layer sitting on top of the one below it.

Designing for the most effective FFF printing means thinking about overhangs and supports and about the parts of the prints that don't have anything underneath them when they print. To avoid needing supports when printing, it can help to remember the letters Y, H, and T when designing, in order to remember to consider gradual overhangs, bridging, and orientation. In addition, it's important to remember that details should be, generally, about 2 mm thick.

Now that the mechanics of 3D printing and how they affect design have been covered, the next chapter will deal with the specific software that will be used in this series.