3Doodler’s Total Domination

I felt like Ralphie’s dad when he finally received his “Major Award” when I finally got my 3Doodler in December. It was like “The soft glow of 3D Printing bliss gleaming in the palm of my hands!”
3Doodler Opened  ???????????????????????????????

So the first thing I made was a Santa hat for my FoldableMe, also a great Kickstarter project. Ok, really the first thing I made was those squiggly blobs in the photo….

Once I got the hang of using the 3Doodler I wanted to put it to the ultimate test: the very first ever 3D Printer Cage Match held at Chicago’s Beauty Bar. I had missed the deadline for entry so I entered under the radar. The battle took place in a very low lit room with most of the light being provided by a disco ball. The challenge was to 3D print a siege weapon to then fire marshmallows at the slower competitors trying to build their weapons. The odds were stacked against myself and the 3Doodler. We were up against formidable odds: a SeeMeCnc Orion and Rostock Max, Rep Rap, Ord Bot, UP! Plus 2, and even a Shapeoko mill.

2013-12-12 19.54.01   2013-12-12 20.19.36   2013-12-12 20.19.15

But the competition didn’t even stand a chance. Little did they know I now had the most portable, easiest setup, fastest warm up times, and fastest design to construction times of any 3D printer on the market. Also the cheapest with no 3D modeling skills required!

Mallow  Launch

With the release of the latest Make: Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing and all of the new machines and products coming out at CES for 3D Printing, don’t count out the little guy the 3Doodler! It really provides the fastest way to go from idea to physical object, even though it might not be the prettiest object.

Download the stencil for the Desktop Catapult here. It will also be available on The 3Doodler web page too, where you can find a lot of other great designs. #Whatwillyoucreate?

Thank you to Simpleswitchlabs, SeeMeCNC, Inventables, and Beauty Bar

Advertisement

3D Scan Your Face!

Here is a quick tutorial and setup for scanning with the Xbox Kinect. Yes that is the video game system, a toy!  So for less than a $100 you can now scan your friends and anything else your heart desires.

Image

First you need an Microsoft Xbox Kinect with USB adapter. You can buy one anywhere the Kinect purchased by it self comes with the USB adapter you can find plenty of used or refurbished ones on the market.

Next you will need a list of programs and installs to actually make the 3D scanning possible. Here it goes!

Kinect Software you will need to download and install 2 programs from here. Free

KinectRuntime and KinectSDK

The actual scanning software is ReconstructMe! Free

All of the rest of the programs are needed for post preduction of tghe actual scans for 3D printing.

MeshLab is for converting the original scan file from a .ply file to an .stl file. Free

The final program is used for cleanup of of the model for 3D printing. Netfabb can do basic trim and fill of any holes that may have occurred during the scan. Making the model “water tight” for 3D printing. Free

Image

My head is downloadable at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:21862 Thanks to Mike Moceri!

Also to make scanning a little easier print out a handle at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18125