Jay Salter Project 3: 3D Printer

 

Process: I began this project by following the car tutorial in Fusion to learn how to use the Form tool. After learning the basics of the form tool, I brainstormed for my personal project and ended up deciding to create a red panda. I started with a quadball with vertical symmetry for the face and slowly added edges and subdivisions as I molded it. I pulled out the ears and the snout (mouth? muzzle? I'm not sure the official terminology for a red panda's face) then worked in depth to allow for eyes to sit within the head. I also carved out a mouth over multiple iterations to try and create some level of expression. After molding the head, I moved on to trying to create the body. Originally, I was attempting to create the body and legs as one solid piece, but that created a lot of impossible geometry and made my creature look like something out of a horror movie, so I abandoned that plan. I went back to the drawing board and decided to create a fairly simplistic body and legs that I knew would support the overall design. To create the legs, I used the torus shape and cut out sections of it to ensure that I would have a small, smooth arc. I then copied these pieces over and adjusted them so they intersected with the body I made out of a box shape. Finally, I added a tail by using the torus shape again. I found that it was the most consistent way for me to get smooth curves on my piece as my original design for the tail wound up looking very lumpy. 


After finalizing my design, I moved onto the Bambu tutorial to learn how to convert my design into an STL file and bring it into the 3D printing software. I found this process to be fairly intuitive and began printing my first attempt. 


Unfortunately, my first attempt was scaled significantly too small (which meant it at least printed very quickly and allowed me to realize my mistake)! 

After realizing my mistake, I went back and scaled up my original design by 250% and began printing again. Thankfully, this time my print was a much more appropriate size. 

Result: Overall, I am extremely happy with how my project came out. I iterated multiple times to finish with a design I was proud of (and one that didn't look like a horror movie creature) and learned a lot about using the form tool in Fusion. Additionally, my issues with sizing on the printer taught me how to readjust the settings and ensure that my second print came out looking much better. 

I'm hoping to continue iterating on this design in the future and potentially try to learn how to create multiple pieces in different colours (or paint one of my prints to look more accurate). I really liked how the head came out in the end, as that was a long and tedious process of adjusting vertices, edges, and faces until it looked somewhat realistic. 

Reflection: This is probably the project I felt like I had the most setbacks on (both with the design process and the overall fabrication process), but I think I did a good job of overcoming the challenges to create a design I could be proud of. I found trying to create organic shapes in Fusion to be extremely difficult, which is why my iterations slowly pushed for a mix of "realistic" and "cartoony" design. Additionally, I think this process has taught me a lot about what tools I can use in Fusion to create a somewhat organic design in an efficient and effective manner (I've begun working on another design that I hope to finish sometime this week to see if I can develop my skills even further). 

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