There's a wealth of information available on the Internet about 3D printing. For a novice, just starting out with a RepRap 3D printer and with limited or no experience with 3D modeling, this can create a daunting task of online searching for what is relevant and helpful.
This book will help plot a course for you and bring to your attention what a designer, artist, or creative hobbyist will find most useful.
Each chapter of this book will introduce you to simple methods of creating original content and at the same time, expose you to the technical aspects of the 3D printing process. Each chapter will ease you into more complex techniques and at the same time expose you to new software tools, which will help expand your technical abilities.
For those who are more experienced, this book will provide a handy reference for comparing the two slicers, Skeinforge and Slic3r. It will also provide you with a quick reference of software functions for some of the more advanced programs such as MeshLab and TopMod.
Overall, this is my 3D printing bible. I'm an artist with serious intentions of making some really cool stuff. This book is the culmination of a year's worth of 3D modeling and printing. Over 600 individual prints were created to test the functions and possibilities of the technologies covered in this book.
If you follow the recipes in this book, you'll learn how to master what is sometimes a frustrating, annoyingly fickle, and time-consuming process, but a process that will open the doors to a wonderful world of new and exciting objects.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with 3D Printing, will get you moving quickly by 3D scanning some common everyday objects with an ordinary digital camera and Autodesk 123D Catch. We'll move into 3D printing our 3D scanned objects and take a basic look at the mechanics of the process.
Chapter 2, Optimizing the Printing Process, will introduce us to Meshmixer, a surface-modeling program that will help us clean up our 3D scanned objects and optimize them for better printing. We'll move into 3D printing by looking at how we can control the interior of our models. By experimenting with the infill of a 3D model, we'll see how different infill patterns are created and how important the surface perimeters are for the structure and surface details.
Chapter 3, Scanning and Printing with a Higher Resolution, will introduce us to 3D scanning with an ordinary, inexpensive red laser, a webcam, and a DAVID Laserscanner software. MeshLab, a very powerful mesh editing program, will be introduced. This will help us with our final 3D scanned results. We'll move into 3D printing by learning how to adjust our printing resolution for finer results.
Chapter 4, Modeling and Printing with Precision, will introduce us to SketchUp Make. It's a 3D modeling program that has an easy learning curve for making precision mechanical parts. We'll move into 3D printing by learning how we can control a slicer and mechanical functions for higher precision printing.
Chapter 5, Manipulating Meshes and Bridges, will introduce us to TopMod. It's a 3D modeling program that works by manipulating the mesh structure. MeshLab will also be examined more closely for its mesh manipulation tools. We'll move into 3D printing and learn how to achieve the difficult task of bridging, the task of printing filament over an empty space.
Chapter 6, Making the Impossible, will examine the tools of TopMod in more depth. We'll move into 3D printing by learning how to create a removable support material for complex models.
Chapter 7, Texture – the Good and the Bad, will examine an easy method to create textures and patterns on our models using Meshmixer and Paint.NET. We'll move into 3D printing by learning how we can control and eliminate some of the unwanted textures created by the 3D printing process.
Chapter 8, Troubleshooting Issues in 3D Modeling, will examine common issues such as inverted face normals and non-manifold geometry that arise in 3D modeling.
Chapter 9, Troubleshooting Issues in 3D Printing, will review the basic systems that make a 3D printer work and how we can troubleshoot some of the issues that occur.
Appendix A, Understanding and Editing Firmware, provides information on how to upload firmware and make some basic changes.
Appendix B, Taking a Closer Look at G-code, provides information on how to access G-code and make some basic changes.
Appendix C, Filament Options for RepRap Printers, is a list of filament materials and their characteristics.
This book is for novice designers, artists, or makers who own home-based 3D printers and have fundamental knowledge of how it works but they desire to gain better mastery over the printing process. Its focus is on introducing easy approaches to create original objects that can be 3D printed and how to 3D print them with good results. Each chapter will focus on digital modeling and then conclude with a section devoted to 3D printing.
All the software featured in this book is either open source or free for use and can be downloaded with an Internet connection. A PC running on Windows 7 was used for all the examples shown in the book, but most of the software can be downloaded for use on a Mac or Linux system.
A 3D printer is required. Considering the proliferation of designs, it's impractical to list them all. This book utilizes two different RepRap-based 3D printers to print its examples. Any RepRap-based 3D printer that utilizes fused deposition modeling (FDM) will suffice, whether purchased fully assembled or by kit.
You'll also need your choice of host software. This is the user interface that controls your 3D printer. This book utilizes two of the most popular host programs: Pronterface and Repetier-Host.
Pronterface is a G-code sender and the graphical user interface of the host. It has a simple set of movement and temperature controls, as shown in the following screenshot:
By clicking on the model in the plate window, a pop-up window will appear. By holding Shift on the keyboard, the print layers can be examined by scrolling the mouse wheel. Refer to the following screenshot:
Printrun's easy interface and good operating features makes it a popular host for many RepRap machines. Its interface is not as sleek as some of the others, but it's a no-frills, dependable work horse.
A good tutorial on using Printrun can be found at http://www.plasticscribbler.com/tutorial/getting-started/item/21-getting-started-with-pronterface#.UxzyAPldUps.
A precompiled version can be downloaded from http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/.
Repetier-Host has an easy GUI and includes a great G-code visualizer. It features a large collection of unique options, which we'll explore further in Chapter 8, Troubleshooting Issues in 3D Modeling. Its slicing options include configured versions of both Slic3r and Skeinforge, making it easy to switch from one slicer to the other when needed. Refer to the following screenshot:
User information and download options are available at http://www.repetier.com/.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text 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: "Scroll down the file list and open the configuration.h file by double-clicking on it."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Fill this out and click on Send."
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