Steps to 3D Printing a Wall Hanging of Your Face

Early on in the semester I was working on 3D printing a miniature model of my head from my shoulders up.  See below:

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As I was tinkering with the file in Tinkercad, I thought, what if I could 3D print this file as a full size head that could hang on a wall.  After maneuvering the file around on Tinkercad, I came up with the right model, downloaded it and printed it.  I have put together my steps in a pdf and shared it with the masses so everyone can have a 3D wall hanging of their face. Below is a representation:

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Here is the guide: 3D Print Your Head as a Wall Hanging

Preview:

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Enjoy!

Missed class + Deloitte Greenhouse = Wk 14

I’ll admit to having missed class and then regretting it when my final grade popped up on Compass, but very rarely do I regret missing class for its content. One of those few times was this past week, when my roommate ran out of gas near Rantoul and my subsequent rescue mission put me well past the ‘attend class’ time zone. Thankfully, it was my turn to learn about digital fabrication at the FabLab, so attending a workshop later should rid me of my regret. Now onto the cool part – the Deloitte Greenhouse (and I’m not just calling this cool because of my impending employment at Deloitte).

The Greenhouse in Chicago is run by none other than an alum from our College of Business – Nick Murphy. He describes it as a space to break free from the typical restrictions of brainstorming and use the technology present in the lab to come up with solutions to unique business challenges. It is also a lab that studies how disruptive technologies (read AM) will affect today’s businesses. We were briefed on three new technologies at Deloitte’s lab – AM, Augmented Reality and Visual Interpretations of Data. We even had the opportunity to work in teams to solve a mini-case regarding incorporating these technologies into Ameren’s business and ow these could be used to better respond to power outages. It was well worth the seven hours of driving and you should make it there sometime if you haven’t already.

Week 14

This week I tried laser cutting. It was very simple to do it. First I chose a black/white picture, added some labels and then it was ready to go on a laser cutting machine.

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It literally took about a minute to engrave the picture on a notebook.

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Here is the final product.

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Something interesting I learned was that it is even possible to do laser cutting on a round objects such as wine glasses. In order to do that the part of the laser machine where the objects is put should be changed to another special round part that will allow to engrave things on round objects. I think it is a great and cheap way to make personalized gifts for friends and family.

Arduino Practice – Week 13

Our last week at the FabLab! I have already been introduced to lazer cutting and stitch printing. This week it was time for arduino work. Fortunately, I have already practiced using adruinos in the MakerLab earlier in the semester so I was able to skip some of the beginner work (making a light blink at different frequencies, to be specific) and go to use some of  the cooler arduino addons.

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My arduino and its brightness sensor.

The lab expert in arduinos had a few different activities for us depending on where we each were at in terms of our abilities. Since I had already gone through the arduino equivalent of the classic programming “Hello World”, I jumped right into using some addons. It was a bit daunting at first because arduinos do require code commands if they are to do anything and I had zero idea how to code on the arduino-one terminal to make a piece of hardware such as an echolocation sensor work. Fortunately for me, my instructor encouraged cheating! By cheating I am referring to using Google to jack other people’s code. If I learned anything from my CS major roommate, the best programmers steal. So I have no shame! Using some code found on the internet and some tinkering with the wiring between my arduino and the bread board, I was able to work a sensor that recorded the distance of the object in front of it using echolocation and a sensor that recorded the relative brightness of the object in front of it. With both of those sensors I went a step up and took recordings that followed certain parameters. For instance, I set it where a light would only blink if the distance from the sensor was under a certain distance. It really gave me a good concept of how these electronics imbedded in things that I use all the time (idk a coffee maker, for instance) have motherboards that respond to commands. And now I was using it on my own!

Fab Times in the Fab Lab! (Part 3/3)

Unfortunately, this was the last of our weeks in the Fab Lab. However, I fully intend on coming back next year and starting all my various Etsy shops which include journal making, 3d printing people’s pets, and after this week, embroidering people’s pets. Yes, these are going to happen.

Throughout this whole semester, I have been searching for a way to be able to 3D print my cat…because she is perfect. However, sadly, unless I can find a way to get my cat to stop moving long enough to scan her (which might not be particularly moral,) there aren’t any any good ways to be able to accomplish this task that I know of. However, this week at the Fab Lab, I decided to embroider her instead!

The task of embroidering her was difficult, because there were about 500 colors in the original picture of her. Using the software taught to us, I was able to reduce the colors in the photo to about 7. The embroidery machine was intelligent enough to break down those 7 colors into 7 sections, so each time it finished a section I had to change the string color. This was a bit of a tedious task; however, I am now an expert at changing the thread in a sewing machine!

All in all, the mission of embroidering my cat was successful! She kind of looks like a mountain, but I think that’s just because she’s fat.

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Digital Making Log: Week 12

Last week was our last week at Fab Lab in Champaign, and for me, it was the most helpful workshop because I learned something that is easily transferable to my semester long project, the spaceship.

We learned how to program arduinos to do something simple, like blink an s.o.s., or turn on LEDs when a sensor detects darkness. It gave me an idea to apply clusters of LEDs to the “radiation bays” on my ship.

I would carve out enough space in the inside so that someone can put in a nano arduino and program the lights to do whatever they want. It plays further into letting my readers personalize their ships.

I also found out about the plethora of other sensors that are available outside of light sensors, including motion sensors. These will help if I design a different, bigger ship that has a giant rotating ball for gravity.

I also went with the class to Deloitte in Chicago to visit the Greenhouse they have there. I was really interested in the process of business consulting and it helped me learn more about it.

As the semester moves forward, I intend to finish my ship and update it on thingiverse.

Week 13: From Arduinos Making to the Deloitte Greenhouse

This week Digital Making started out with a sad event-our final session at the Fab Lab. I’ve learned so much there in the last few weeks and have had my eyes opened to tons of ne ideas for projects (as you can probably see from my ever growing Maker Movement Pinterest board) so I’m sad to see our time there coming to an end. I will definitely be back at some point on my own though! For our last rotation, my group was working with Aurduinos, something I knew about from my Intro to Electrical Engineering class, but that I haven’t really had a chance to mess around with on my own. We did a few basic activities, like programming the Aurduino to blink and then learning how to have it blink out and S.O.S. After that we got to use some of the sensors, which would allow us to add a bunch of cool stuff like light sensitivity or the ability to do something when the sensor senses a change in temperature or someone touches it to our projects. After that our instructor was helping people add specific things to their final projects, so I got started on a new project of my own, making a cardboard lamp out of a box I had just gotten a shipment of shoes in. I had seen this project on Instuctables a while back (here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Geometric-Cardboard-Lamp/), but cutting out all the pieces by hand seemed like a lot of hard work. Working with the laser cutter at the Fab Lab last time we were there, though, made me realize I might be able to make this lamp much more quickly-by using the laser cutter to do the cutting work for me! After checking with the Lab gurus if it was okay to cut cardboard, I got to work. Things went quite smoothly and after putting in a bit of work punching out the pieces and gluing, I had my very own cardboard lamp!

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I got invited to dinner with the Fab Lab team (they were making pasta in the back room) and I still had some time to kill before it was done, so I started working on the screenprinting project I had started last week. In just about 15 minutes, I was able to successfully screenprint two more shirts with my logo in addition to the sweater I made last time. Lesson learned: screenprinting is pretty dang easy once you have the screen made!

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Overall, my last week at the Fab Lab, was pretty productive, but the Digital Making fun wasn’t over for the week. We still had our Friday field trip to the Deloitte Greenhouse to look forward to. The trip ended up being well worth the wait. Once in Chicago and done with our awesome meal at Roti, we headed over to the Deloitte offices, where we, along with some of the Making Things students, were shown around the client innovation center aka “The Greenhouse.” There we learned about some of the newest technologies that are changing modern industry, including

Augmented Reality, Data Visualization, and of course 3D printing! After a getting an introduction to each of these technologies from some Deliotters who worked at The Greenhouse, we had opportunity to work in teams to solve a mini-case regarding incorporating these technologies into Ameren’s business. This aspect of the tour really showed us how Deloitte goes about trying to bring new technologies into client projects and what we might expect to see if we were to work at Deloitte one day (a definite possibility for me). To end the day, we got to talk to a panel of current Deloitte analysts about their jobs and life at Deloitte, which was quite interesting as well. I learned even more about the company and am looking forward to applying for an internship with them again next year. Hopefully, it works out better than this year, where I got to the final round of interviews but did not get an offer.

Sew Close…

I was really bad at hand embroidery when I learned in high school. Turns out, I’m not too much better at digital embroidery. After another fabulous FabLab day, another means of 3D output is under the belt. Sort of.

Step one is to choose an image. I chose a scene from my all time favorite 90’s TV show, Rocko’s Modern Life.

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Next step, was to turn the image into as few colors as possible. After working tirelessly on this, powered by the aid of Mt. Dew and Cheezits, my file crashed. Sooo I did it again. With more Mt. Dew and Cheezits. After my colors were well consolidated, I threaded the machine up, and let that bad boy do its thing. I changed the spools when directed to, and eagerly awaited the sewing machine to finish my creation.

It had some really creative names for colors, and I had to Google a few of them, ask people which purple was more “lavender in shade” and thread that machine more times than I could count. In the end, I think I totally #nailedit.

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Laser Cutting @ the FabLab

LaserCutting @ the UI FabLabThis week we met at the UIUC FabLab the third – and last time. This time, I did not print. I cut things precisely.

UI FabLab has an Epilog Mini 24 Laser Cutter. It can cut or engrave a lot of materials. Paper, Wood, Glas, … You can find the full list here. It can even engrave cylindrical elements by using a “Rotary Attachment”. Now, I’ve already mentioned the two basic purposes you can use the Epilog for. You can either cut things or just engrave on the surface. It uses a laser that makes that job pretty precise.

We started our experience by using the software InkScape. In fact, you don’t have to use that specific software, as the Epilog just needs a PDF file to start the “print”. InkScape, however, makes a quite good job in converting images that you import into Black & White (without any grey-scales). The trick to tell the Epilog when to cut and when to engrave is the thickness of a line. A thin line of 0.001 inch tells him to cut. Any other black line or object will be engraved.

I engraved an image on small paper booklet. As it was pretty easy and worked well I decided to engrave and cut a small pice of wood. However, both things will be gifts and that’s why I won’t upload pictures of them at this time.

Fab Lab – Week 3 (& Reunion)

This week we returned to the Fab Lab for our final session. I already had an idea what I was doing based on my classmates’ work in the prior weeks, so I was excited to learn the last topic. I got to try out digital embroidery!

I was excited to return to the Fab Lab this week, so I planned ahead and made a design that had some meaning behind it. So this week was especially exciting because my roommate for the last 3 years was returning from her semester abroad in London! She actually was meeting me right after class that day and planned to stay through the weekend. Here is a picture of her from the last day in London.

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Since I knew she was visiting me and it was also her birthday a few days before, I decided to make her something in class this week. After a brief introduction to the sewing machine I was using and the software, I was off to importing my design and choosing my patterns and colors. Here is the design as I was choosing the patterns and trying to pick some colors.

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Before I tried the intricate design with the lettering, I did a test run of a smaller scale version. I should note why there is a girl holding a flag…my roommate is on the Marching Illini Color Guard, and is a returning captain for the upcoming season. Anyways, here was the test run and some of the process.

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I was really excited that there was a pattern of music notes, and I loved how it looked in the background. Since the smaller scale one was quick and easy, I tried out the one with the letters added on.

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I was so happy with the results! I had a little trouble with the letters, but I didn’t have a lot of time to perfect it because I had to go meet my roommate and show her what I made! The main issue I was having besides the loose thread between the letters that I needed to cut off, was the bobbin thread got pulled through for some of the letters. So I ended up going over a few parts to correct the problem. I wanted to go over the blue letters again, but I was already running late by correcting the silver letters. But it turned out that my roommate loved it and was not expecting it at all! She wants to sew the patches onto her duffle bag for this season! Here’s a picture of us reunited.

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I had a great week in class and with her. I’m so glad I got to see her and I can’t wait to see the patch on her duffle bag. I may have requests from the rest of the team so they can have matching ones. I hope that I can return to the Fab Lab after this semester for fun projects like this.