When: 10 May 2019, 2pm
Members present: All
This 3D Printing lesson was taught by Hanyang Leong. He started off with the basics, such as what 3D Printing is and the idea behind how it works. He detailed its uses and it was a great introduction for students who only knew vaguely of the concept.
We were tasked to download Autodsek Fusion360 on our laptops prior to the session, and that was what we delved into for the remainder of it. Hanyang taught us how to navigate the 3D workspace, which can be quite confusing to handle for first-time users. He showed us how to build basic shapes, combine them, and move them around. This is important because this would be the software we use to prepare any models to be 3D printed. He gave us some time to get used to the controls and try modelling a random object or two just to get the hang of it.
Since Hanyang seemed to be quite the expert on 3D printing, our group decided to approach him and ask him for what he thought of our group idea. So far, we were quite set on the idea of chocolate-printing, which would require melting the chocolate, ‘printing’ it out for molding into desired shapes, and finally, cooling. We quickly learnt that there is already existing software for 3D printers to print chocolate, in the form of a kit anyone could buy online. That is, it is already an idea that has been commercialised. If we were to continue pursuing this project, it might affect our originality score.
At that point in time, we were playing around with Autodesk Fusion 360 and was tasked by Hanyang to create a 3D model of an object. We decided to make a model of Claudia’s tiny octopus soft toy, and it was then that it occurred to us that 3D printers could only print solid, hard materials. It would be great if we could print the octopus which was soft, unlike the usual hard PLA material. We were hit with the sudden inspiration to create a 3D Soft Toy Printer!
The soft toy octopus ‘Ozone’.
With a bit of searching, we came across an interesting article on 3D-printing stuffed toys, by Scott Hudson (Disney Research). It involved modifying the existing 3D printer to fabricate three-dimensional objects made from soft fibres such as yarn and soft wool yarn. It was quite a novel idea and technique, with few replications thus far. After consulting Hanyang and Dr Ho, who happened to be in his office, we agreed that building a 3D Printer that prints 3D stuffed toys may be too complex and intensive for our short 3-month timeline. Nonetheless, we could pursue a similar but more manageable project: Building a 3D printer that prints 2D embroidery.
3D printing may still be pretty new to us, but it was an idea that we were willing to take on!