Make: 3D Printing (2014)

Preface

Additive Personal Fabrication

Anna Kaziunas France

Welcome to Make: 3D Printing. I’ve compiled the best projects, tutorials, and stories about 3D printing from MAKE’s print and online publications, refreshed them for the latest developments, and added a few new pieces you haven’t seen elsewhere.

Personal Fabrication

This book contains stories and tutorials from and about makers who have embraced additive personal fabrication, a term that encompasses 3D printing activities at home, work, or school. Some of these makers are exploring not only DIY 3D printing, but creating scalable small businesses through the use of fabrication services for small batch custom manufacturing. Others create just what they need, just in time, from their desktop factory.

As it turns out, the “killer app” in digital fabrication, as in computing, is personalization, producing products for a market of one person.

— Neil Gershenfeld Foreign Affairs November/December 2012

Although additive manufacturing has been the subject of some irrational media exuberance, it’s only part of the digital fabrication equation. As an instructor at the Fab Academy, a globally distributed rapid prototyping course where we turn codes into things, I taught a wide variety of digital fabrication techniques, often using subtractive methods and machines to achieve desired results.

This in no way diminishes the opportunities for creativity and expression that are made possible by 3D printing. Through 3D scanning and printing I have been able to quickly model and fabricate a variety of completely bespoke (and often last minute) items; from costumes to artwork to functional molds.

Part of the power of personal fabrication is directly tied to having easily accessible personal machines. Machine access combined with creativity and time pressure can lead to interesting mashups and materials choices.

When working on the scanning chapter of Getting Started with MakerBot (see Chapter 6), I created a scan of a prop skull. I later decided to use the scan to create the traditional necklace of skulls or “garland of Kali” as costume for Halloween. Because I had two desktop printers at my home, I was able to prototype my sizable Kali necklace in a single week by running them continuously. I also used the skull scan to create batches of molded skull chocolates (see the Chapter 21 tutorial).

A month later, the Kali necklace was joined by a belt and I incorporated it into a four armed sculpture I titled “Self Portrait as Kali” (see Figure 1). I created the body of the sculpture from several self scans that I combined digitally to create two sets of arms on a single torso. Both sets of arms are broken off at the forearms, as if the original scan was of an ancient statue that has been damaged over time. The final 3D model was sliced into 125 individual routed slices of 1/2” medium density fibreboard (MDF) that I fabricated on a large CNC (computer numerically controlled) router. I then assembled and painted the slices by hand. The belt and necklace, I also painted by hand and strung them over the assembled body. The finished sculpture has been displayed at several exhibitions, including the “Bits to Its” 3D printed sculpture show and the RISD Museum.

In many ways, 3D printing is currently the most personally accessible of all types of digital manufacturing. Prices have come down enough for many to afford to own their own printers, and desktop machine print quality has dramatically improved. Online printing services are readily available for those who cannot afford printers or whose materials needs go beyond printed plastic.

The world of personal fabrication is rapidly evolving—and you are now part of it!