Outside Event - Autodesk Gallery/3D Hubs Meetup & Mixer

For outside event #1 for the semester, my husband and I attended the 3D Hubs mixer at the Autodesk Gallery at 1 Market Street (2nd floor).

We have been working with 3D Hubs for a while now (though their print on demand system is not the most user friendly and presents problems with getting paid for work) and they had an afternoon of software presentation and a panel of speakers in the evening to celebrate their collaboration with Autodesk 123D products (essentially the Autodesk API has 3D Hubs as an integrated print source allowing users to print directly to a 3D Hubs user).

Personally I don't use most of the 123D apps because they are limited to iPad platforms (which I think does a huge disservice to the community on the whole because most of the time "makers" are big on open source (running linux homebrew machines) or PCs and a lot of designers don't use Mac products because there have been limited comprehensive design software for Mac until recently).

I do use TinkerCAD (as does my husband) for a lot of design work, which was acquired by Autodesk last year. There are a number of reasons I love TinkerCAD and when I was teaching, I was working on a curriculum to teach it to elementary school kids.

The afternoon consisted of TinkerCAD and MeshMixer presentations (TinkerCAD is a web based CAD program and MeshMixer is sculpt/paint/print program I haven't played much with but it's on my list of explorations).

We didn't attend the afternoon tutorial sessions (but we did print a bunch of swag for 3D Hubs).

Ultimately the most interesting part of the entire event was the Autodesk Gallery itself. As an artist with a background in industrial design, I feel that products can be art. The process of developing an idea is just the same as developing artistic ideas. They had an amazing range of things from 3D printed objects (and an Objet SLS printer), giant Lego sculptures, various prototypes and mock ups of vehicles and products and more. You really should check it out. They are open to the public on Wednesday and Friday each week.

Working with Chance - Shifted Perspective

After thinking about what we have been discussing for this class about indeterminacy and working in chance, I decided to apply it to my independent studies class as well.

In 3D printing, a lot of variables are left to chance. There is no guarantee that your print will be successful. If you print the same object 1,000 times, there are any number of things that will effect the outcome. Ambient temperature, material, hot end temperatures, computer issues, hardware issues, and more can change the outcome of your print.

Case in point:

This is an 18 gallon tote filled with failed prints (going back about a year - there are more that have been thrown away or are in other boxes as well). Some failed due to equipment failure. Some failed due to material failure. Some of them we have no clue as to why they failed. 

This box is intended to be run through a "filabot" style machine to reclaim the expended filament. Mind-2-Matter and LaserGnomes try to be as green as possible, so reclaiming spent filament is inline with our  business plans. I figured in the meantime, I could do a bit of reclamation myself. 

I spent some time digging through the box to create a sculpture from failed and discarded prints. Since we design and print a myriad of things from engineering parts to organic shapes, it was an interesting melange of components to choose from. 

We had a number of MegaFire and SlugFire shells that failed for various reasons or were made prior to additional revisions that lead to our finished retail ready products for NERF blasters.  We also had a number of failed flowers from another project that we undertook for Valentines Day. 

Obviously it's time to get a larger photo tent :)

Shifted Perspective

Shifted Perspective

Shifted Perspective

AppsWorld 2014 SF

I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by AppsWorld expo. I a few blocks away from Moscone and I am used to expos and conferences that shut Howard Street down for days. When we got there, I thought I was in the wrong place!

A lot of the exhibitors were more backend oriented (api devs, SEO and analytic based for advertising, etc), so there wasn't a ton of stuff for the "lay person". In fact, there were several booths that basically shooed me on when I responded that I was not a developer when asked.

A few things that excited me: WebOS is still alive! Palm diehards know and love WebOS. I was crushed when Palm was acquired by HP and then HP killed off Palm and WebOS. I was even more crushed when my Palm Pixi died and I had to switch to Android.

Well, WebOS is now a super sleek OS for LG televisions. It was pretty sweet and the menus and apps come up over live TV instead of going to a home menu. It's nothing life changing but it was a pretty intuitive system that alleviated the need for all the damn input channels on your TV for multiple devices.

I'll be honest with you, I am not a gamer. I have so much to do that I don't play Angry Birds or Robot Unicorn Whatever and the like. I checked out a few of the gaming booths. The most interesting, at least to me, was Electro-Pocalypse. I am an Art Education major. I have worked as an educator. I love the idea of teaching kids about electricity and circuitry through an interactive game. This would have been a fantastic tool at the after school I worked at because, well, I'm pretty sure the parents would have been really upset if I actually taught their kids circuitry (that's too dangerous!). The interface was fun and pretty easy to navigate.

I was REALLY disappointed in the booth that I had planned to check out, iCrea8. The premise is great: using photos to create 3D models for video games. But in all honesty, the execution was terrible. They have partnered with Autodesk, but it doesn't seem like they are using Autodesk's 123D Catch software (or if they are it's a really crude version of it).

I had really high hopes to develop this as a potential for 3D printing, but their models/characters look like a picture is pasted in place on the model. That won't actually work for what we do.

Sauce Labs had a small arduino/3D printed unit they used for testing/calibrating phones and that got me and the co-founder into a great discussion about 3D printing, especially when he said to me "wouldn't it be great if there was a place that had like a wall of 3D printers so you could get multiple things printed all at once?" He was pretty excited when I told him there was such a place! I think I spent the longest amount time at their booth even though I don't have apps that need testing. It was nice that he didn't blow me off because I'm not a developer.

Siblings - A 3d Sculpture by LaserGnomes/Mind2Matter

This is the video I had planned to share with the class today.



This sculpture was created using 3D scanning technology (Sense 3D Scanner), a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 tablet, Maya, KISS Slic3r and the Type A Machines Series 1 3D printer.



The print took almost 30 hours to complete and was a gift for the client's mother for Christmas.

Research Assignment - Write Up & Links

Okay, I have to say I wasn't overly impressed with many of the artists listed on the research page. Also a lot of the links that were still live, were pretty dated. I struck out to find a few that were of interest and may be of interest to you as well.

The first  I came across was 8 Bits, 3 Dimensions. Adam Lister and Isaac Budmen work together to create 8 bit (remember the super early days of gaming?!?!) images of pop culture (Star Trek, Superman, etc.). A really interesting fact about their collaboration is that they had not met in person or even had phone contact through the entire process. Adam Lister creates 8 bit style images and Isaac Budmen creates 3 dimensional sandstone replications of the images using 3D printing (Though Budmen doesn't actually do the printing himself - with a note about production from their "manufacturer" they are likely using Shapeways to produce the pieces for them).

Original Painting by Adam Lister

3D Print by Isaac Budmen (likely printed by Shapeways)

One of the links on the research page that I love and visit frequently is Make. It has been the source of my procrastination (and I think helped me develop project ADD with so many great ideas). Make Magazine was influential in which 3D printer was going to be our first (and only - we work exclusively with Type A Machines Series 1). The current issue is drone building focused but there are projects from all walks of life including AI, woodworking, hand crafts and more.

Last link is for HoloDecks, who used 3d printing to create an augmented visual representation of sound (be it a fairly small representation due to the size limitations of the print bed of the MakerBot). This is a combination of 3D printing, and light and sound programming. It's pretty cool.