3-D Printing Lab - 10/6/16

During lab class today we discussed 3-D printing. The 3-D printer that the college has is a Maker-bot, so we all went to work learning how to use it. First I learned how the history of Maker-Bot and how the company started and how it expanded very quickly. Next I learned about Maker-Bot desktop and how to use that by reading an article and watching a quick video. Then I watched a quick video on the print settings, so far I was starting to get a basic idea of how 3-D printing works. The following things I learned were laying out your print job on the build plate, preparing design fides for 3-D printing, learned how to use thingiverse, how to export 3-D printing files, and finally how much filament is used/cost/time. Which was very interesting and a lot cheaper than I would have thought 3-D printing Filament would have cost! The next thing I did was go to Tinkercad which looks like this:

I then started to mess around with the shapes and seeing what I could put together. However it is my very first time using a 3-D printing building software, so I am not an expert.

So I made a neat little house! Although Tinkercad is a great software I wanted to be a little more specific when it came to building my design. So I researched some other programs and found a great one called Meshmixer. I messed around with it for awhile and brainstormed what I wanted to make. Then I thought, I could make my favorite fighter jet!

So I was messing around with mesh mixer and I was able to sketch an outline of the plane with the help of the picture.

This is my progress... Its a series of smoothing my outline while adding detail and depth... using multiple images of the F-22 I as able to get an okay amount of detail. I added the top fins later in the design process... I constructed one, then copy and pasted so I could tack it onto the design at the same angle. Finally I smoothed and added the last touches.... here is the timeline in images.

I cannot wait to print!