unl-digifab

Week 4 - Mesh Creation and Stacked Contours

Tuesday

Thursday

Tuesday

• Artist of the Day
• Working with Meshes
  • Mesh Example
• Importing Meshes
• Extracting Contours
  • Example Buffalo Contours
  • Example Sliced Pikachu

Artist of the Day

Inmi Lee. I will not dance. 2016.

Also:

• d i s p lace 2005
• complete projects

Working With Meshes

Solids vs. Meshes

• Solids
  • what are they? (collections of surfaces)
  • explode, cap
  • when we export STL we are creating a mesh
• Meshes
  • Create meshes directly

Mesh Example

Rhino file: solids_meshes.3dm

Importing Meshes

• Importing - Import
  • STL file - Stereolithography (wikipedia definition)
  • buffalo.stl
  • Rotate, Scale, and translate as necessary to find and position the object. Also, Zoom Extents
• Simplification (MeshReduce)
  • buffalo_reduction.3dm
• Edit directly - PointsOn, and directly manipulating points on the mesh.
• Closed vs Open Meshes
  • We need closed meshes for 3DP. Object properties will tell you if a mesh is an open or closed mesh.
  • Attempt to patch an open mesh: Mesh -> Repair Tools -> Fill All Holes
  • Rhino Mesh Repair tools

Extracting Contours

• Slicing a 3d mesh or surface object into 2d stacks
  • the contour command
  • contour_command.3dm
  • contour_flatten_shear.3dm
• Importing and slicing a complex mesh
  • Finding a mesh (thingiverse.com)
  • Importing a mesh into rhino
  • Slicing a mesh with the contour command
  • slicing/design for digital fabrication (material thickness considerations)
• Simplifying mesh
  • ReduceMesh
• Go from mesh to unrollable surface:
  • MeshToNURB

Example Buffalo Contours

Rhino file: buffalo_contours.3dm

Example Sliced Pikachu

Rhino file: sliced_pikachu.3dm

Homework

Work on project 1 (due in one week, Tuesday 9/20)

Thursday

• Artist of the Day
• Work Time
• Material Tests (maybe)

Artist of the Day 2

Lawrence Malstaf

• Folding
• Shrink
• Portfolio website

Homework 2

Complete project 1 (due Tuesday, 9/20)

Material Tests

• When you first work with a new material, you want to determine what settings work best for cutting and engraving.
• As a starting point, you can begin with the suggested settings for common materials.
• Typically you might produce a small shape (square, or text) which you can run multiple times with different settings for the
• Full Spectrum Laser (who manufactures our laser) has some material test files we can try: https://fslaser.com/material-test/

Cutting Acrylic

Acrylic is the most common plastic sheet good that we might cut with the laser cutter.

• We can vector cut, vector engrave, or raster engrave acrylic very successfully.
• When you first get a new sheet of acrylic, determine what thickness it is (calipers): measuring thickness
• Run some material tests to find speed, power, and current settings.

Plastic Suppliers

• H&H Plastics
• Home Depot, Lowes, etc.
• Tap Plastics (mail order)

Reference

None