rapman-education's posterous

rapman-education's posterous

Dave White  //  A place for educators, teachers, lecturers and students to find "stuff" about RapMan,BfB3000 and BfB 3DTouch printers... The unofficial Blog by Dave White, Advanced Skills Teacher and Head of D&T in Clevedon School UK.

Archive for

January 2013

Jan 18 / 3:09pm

I've moved!

I have unfortunately had to move my blog to another platform.

But the good news is that I can now be found here... http://3dprintineducation.wordpress.com/

Like the new name, eh?

Why have I moved? Nothing sinister, it's simply because I use the Blogsy iPad app to do most of my blogging and since early December 2012 Blogsy has not been able to access my blog through the Posterous API.

My apologies to those who regularly visit my blog (and there are quite a few of you according to the analytics).
If you are a regular visitor please update any favourites or bookmarks to my new address, and if you are a new visitor please add this link to keep up to date with the news http://3dprintineducation.wordpress.com/

Filed under  //  Teaching and Learning   dt   education   media   printing  
Jan 16 / 8:31pm

Designing, prototyping, 3D printing... and augmented reality.

P63

3D CAD is fantastic and students using it can use it to design their products with relative ease. Even better if they output their designs to 3D printers or CNC machines. But there are times when visualising the designed object in the "real environment" can be difficult. Visualising the object "in situ" before committing to printing or machining can be useful in determining whether the design is correct, suitable for purpose or "looks right".

Ok so it is possible to "Photoshop" an image of the CAD design into a photo of the environment but wouldn't it be better if this could be done in 3D?.... With augmented reality this is possible and using an iPad and a suitable app relatively easy to do.

The photo attached to this post only shows half of the story... Its not possible to show a 3D scene using 2D media! The object (a model 3DTouch 3D printer) is 3D, moving the iPad around this virtual object does actually allow you to see it from above, sides, front, back, etc.

Yes the object viewed using augmented reality is still a "virtual object" but as a method of "testing" ideas before actually prototyping or making the object is another tool available to designers... Used in isolation I'm not certain how useful augmented reality actually can be, but as a first check in an iterative design process I can see some potential for some students in some design projects.

I have a feeling that teaming augmented reality with 3D printing could be a powerful combination. I hope to try this out with students soon and intend to get them to design objects, test them with augmented reality and modify their designs before 3D printing them.

If you fancy giving it a go then you might be interested in trying the iPad app "Augment" https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/augment/id506463171?mt=8 For a free app (at the time of posting this) it is really powerful, a range of 3D formats can be imported (.stl, .3ds, .obj etc) and of course these can be designed in CAD or downloaded from sites such as Thingiverse. Imported objects can be scaled, rotated, moved, photographed etc. And to get you started there are a number of lovely sample files available in the app too.

Filed under  //  Software   iPad   teachingandlearning  
Jan 7 / 9:18pm

Cubex A new 3D printer

P76

Introducing the new 3D printer from 3D Systems ... The Cubex (big brother to the Cube printer).
It has a huge print bed (just like its predecessor the Bits from Bytes 3D Touch). 3 colour printing and new software.

Cool!.... I'll have to start saving for one of these!

Further details from the Cubify website http://cubify.com/cubex/index.aspx?tb_cubex_learn

Filed under  //  hardware   news   printing   software