Print

[mweed]

For those who haven't been keeping up with the Minecraft topic, IMR was nice enough to create a 60-foot tall virtual pleo to add to Weedovia's scenery.   Well, about the same time she did that, there began a lot of interest on the Minecraft forums about new software for 3D printing.  So, I decided to have a bit of fun; I took IMR's rendition of pleo in minecraft, did some clean-up (she actually had a house inside the pleo with the door in one leg) and a few modifications, and generated a 3D model.  I sent the model to a company that used the computer file to create a cute little miniature out of sandstone!

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[Talon]

That's neat. Call me a pleo-fanatic but I'd like to have a little pleo figurine. Lol!
Talon

[Bandersnatch]

Aww! It's so cute and tiny! I love that it's got Bob's name on it!
I've looked into 3D printing a couple of times, but never really thought to use it on anything. The results seem pretty neat! 

[Talon]

Okay I know I'm really going to make myself look like an idiot but how do you produce a three D image on a two D surface like a piece of paper? The blind lady is confused.
Talon

[InmemoryofRomeo]

Hehe, that is very, very cool. Bob has a pet rock now! Do post a topic on the minecraft forums and show it off lol. It's so neat to see it come to life!

Talon, it was never printed on paper at all, it is all done via computer. The minecraft model was made of lots of little cubes in 3D, Mweed took that and turned it into a 3D render, the company then took the 3D render and used it in their computers to instruct a machine to carve a 3D model out of a block of sandstone.

If you did do it on paper I guess you'd need one page for each 'layer'.

[mweed]

You don't.  You can emulate the appearance of a 3D on a 2D surface using artistic concepts like perspective.  But in this case, the object is built in a virtual 3D world where you see a 2D image on the computer screen, in the same way a photograph does of the real world.  I can understand visual concepts not making much sense to a non-visual person.  For a great perspective on this, there's the classic short story "Flatland" written by Edwin A. Abbot back in 1884.  It's about how  "people" living in a 2-dimensional world "see" and react and respond to us 3-dimensional folks.  But I digress . . .  

Minecraft allows you to create the objects in a simulated 3D world.  Technology has now advanced to the point where computers can control machinery to create objects in 3D.  "Printing" 3D objects probably isn't the best terminology, but it's what the industry has opted to use.  There are several ways to make the 3D object.  One simple way is to start with a block of something and use computer guided saws and drills to carve the shape out of the block.   A second method used is light/heat sensitive liquid gel.  You fill a chamber with the gel, and then use computer guided laser beams.  You shine two laser beams into the gel; where the two beams intersect, the gel solidifies.  So, but moving the laser beams, you can essentially draw the shape of the object leaving a solid object suspended in the gel.  

A third way, the way used to create this pleo, is a lot closer to "printing" a stack of paper on an ink-jet printer.  You build the object by stacking very thin layers on top of each other.  The "printer" spreads a very thin flat layer of "sand".  Then, colored ink is sprayed onto the sand.  The ink makes the sand stick together.  The printer then spreads another thin layer of sand on top of the first one.  Then another pass of ink is sprayed on.  This process is repeated hundreds or even thousands of times.  Each pass makes the pile of sand thicker, just like each page of paper printed makes the stack of paper thicker.  Once finished, the areas sprayed with ink stick together and dry solid, while the areas not sprayed stays loose sand that simply falls away, leaving the now solid object behind.

[N.S.E.C.T.]

wow real cute it would be cool if there were real pleo's that size
now you need a little egg to go with hum so you can have a pleo hatching

[mweed]

This was really a "proof of concept" to me.  I wanted to see how well things worked and how well it will hold up.  The question is, where to go from here?  Based on this prototype, I see a few small changes that need to be made.  But then what?  You guys want to buy little pleo figurines?  Should I come out with a whole line of little pleo nick-knacks?  A series of Bob the Pleo collectible characters?   The pleo is hollow, and the inside can be adjusted to fit things.  I actually considered placing the guts of a USB thumb drive inside one with a short cable running out the belly to plug into a computer.

This version is approx. 3.6 inches from nose to tail, about 1.4 inches tall, and consists of about 2,000 1.5mm blocks.   It cost me around $18 plus shipping.  It actually has a pink tongue and white teeth that you would have to break the head open to see.  The head and body are hollow, with yellow blocks on the inside that "glow" in Minecraft to light up the inside.  The tail is solid, with a series of gray blocks that run the length of the tail to simulate the wires.   No one will ever see these, but I needed the head and tail walls to be thicker, so I added them.

[Crewella]

I was fascinated when the Makerbot Thing-o-matic came out that 'prints' 3D models in layers of plastic filament.  

http://store.makerbot.com/thing-o-matic-kit-mk7.html

*Mostly I think I just love that name - Wallace and Gromit fan!*  

That's a fab idea - I love the fact that there are details in there that you can't actually see!!  

[Pleo-Freak55]

boah nice is the Pleo like me very keep it up. Yes?

[Talon]

Three D printing sounds so cool! In college I got to use the beautiful and highly sought after Tiger Pro. It's a Braille printer that can produce raised images from any picture onto a piece of paper. It feels kind of like the raised letters you find on greeting cards or those cardboard thinggies that protect DVD cases. And do I have one of these printers? *chuckle* I wish. It's price tag is only about twelve thousand dollars. My screnereader JAWS- the program that reads the world to me is nine hundred dollars give or take without a software maintenance agreement. Anyway I think selling the little Widovia characters wouldn't be a bad idea.
Talon

[Lunamione7]

That Thing-o-matic thing is like a replicator from Star Trek I want one!

In the future you could have it make all sorts of things for you, in high school we had this huge machine we were taught to call "Cad" I'm not sure if that is its real name but it took up half a room (a very large room) and you would put a big thick block of wood inside of it, press a button and it would make you a toy car or plane and one time we even got it to make a replica of the steam train from 'Back to the Future' and a wooden Yoda doll. It took months to program it and about 30 seconds for it to make what you spent half a year designing. If they could make an easier, faster way of telling the machine what you want it would be great! In the future you need not buy things anymore, just have your replicator machine make it for you

I think it's cool and I would buy the Pleo character figurines for sure Do you send the design away and they send you back the model or can you personally take it too them? I would like to see a video of the machine making the Pleo models.


Also Talon I have JAWS too. I'm not totally blind, it's just the left eye that is no good but I still like to use it. It gets confused when it has to read the new Facebook timeline

[mweed]

Here's a good video that explains the printer

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oYwwcEdZ14" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oYwwcEdZ14</a>

[Crewella]

Wow - that's fascinating but very labour intensive!  Just think what they'll be able to do in a couple of years!!  Thanks for posting that. 

[Lunamione7]

http://www.myrobotnation.com/

This is cool, you can design your own model robot and have it 3D printed. I tried to design a robot but the website is difficult, it will not accept Internet Explorer and when I tried Firefox it said my graphics card had been blacklisted I don't know what that means... anyway if you can get it to work it looks like fun.

[Crewella]

It does look like fun, but I got the same result as you!    

[Talon]

Wow! I think I was able to pick out when the printer produced something and it was really fast!
Talon