Thursday, June 17, 2021

3D Journey


    Even though it is summer break, it has been a busy time at a the Creative Arts Center. First, the Physical Plant gods decided that the floor in the largest classroom, vintage '60's asbestos tile, was dangerous and had to go. That meant everything in the room except large furniture had to be stowed. That classroom was my former colleague's, and let's just say organization was not his strong suit. So, I took a week and re-organized in the process of cleaning out all the student shelves and work. And it kind of spread to the whole building.
    In the process, the AV equipment in the room was re-evaluated and the result of the ancient status of the equipment and funds that were leftover in the department because nobody spent money during COVID was that we will soon have a new projector and screen, two document cameras and a portable light for lighting still life set-ups. 
   Best of all, thrown into the deal was funding for a 3D scanner and printer, both of which I've been working with this week.
     This is a Sol 3D Scanner. It came with a little rubber Duckie to practice with. It will scan the object up to five times in different positions, and then it meshes all of the scans together to form a coherent image. Each position gets ten passes of the scanner, so if you scan the object five times in different positions, there will be 50 passes in all.


  This pile of goo is the result of my first try. The scanner has a black tent and cloth that serves as a small darkroom for the machine while it is scanning. I'm pretty sure there was some light sneaking in so that the scanner was reading the round platform as part of the object.




My second attempt was much more successful. I was able to save the file in the Photoshop 3D program. If I can manage to figure out how that works, I will be able to alter the shape of the object before saving it to print. I'm thinking about giving Duckie a unicorn horn, if I can manage it.
 


This is going to be fun.

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