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

Modeling the ring


Now that all the measurements have been taken, it is time to go to Blender. Start a new scene and clear all the default elements (A + A + X). Then, save the scene (Ctrl + S) to create a new project in the directory of your choice. Name the project SD Card Ring.blend.

Modeling the finger

Let's start the modeling with the following steps:

  1. Add (Shift + A) a Cylinder.

  2. In the left-hand side bar, change the options for the cylinder. Change the Vertices value to 64 so the cylinder is smoother than default. Change the Radius value to half the measured finger diameter. Change the Depth value to 10:

    Note

    Blender can take simple equations in these boxes, so instead of dividing the diameter by half to get the radius, simply type the diameter followed by /2, and it will divide it by 2 for you. So, in the example, typing 19.3/2 resulted in a radius of 9.650.

  3. In the properties tab in the right-hand side bar, in the Object tab (orange cube), rename this cylinder to Finger, since it represents...