One for @bartv and the @shapeways team - new prototypes, more wine, learning the lessons of articulation, 0.2mm tolerances and materials

Spore prototypes arrive: 2 piece interlocking design (thanks @shapeways)

The Spore is my first experiment with interlocked printed components.  It’s a 12 point hollowed-out conical star inside a 2mm thick spherical shell with 24 holes cut in it.  It was a material test as much as anything - I wanted to get a feel for alumide, transparent plastic and sandstone.

As you can see, it’s worked out quite well.  The really interesting thing is how sturdy and usable the sandstone is (the white one) and how good the definition of the alumide is (the grey one).

The next step is working out how to link them so I can 3D print a whole necklace… stay tuned ;)

day #35 - some thoughts on prototypes and what to do with them

I’ve got a few pototypes back and I thought it would be useful to add some sort of framework to how we’re approaching the prototype process:

1) Materials change the appearance of the design more than you might think…  

This one seems obvious, right?  Sure.  But it threw up an interesting couple of points for me. 3D designs (unlike graphics) are subject to real world factors that affect the success of the design, i.e. light, gravity etc.  Look at the red Ethanol pendant and the white one for comparison.  They’re identical, except for colour, the same material and the same 3D model.  But in the real world, the red one has much more definition and the type characters are a lot more defined by the contrast of solid colour, light and shadow.  The white one looks great from certain angles, but from other angles it lacks definition and the design gets lost.

2) Design font characters and walls thiner than you wanted at the SVG stage (a bit)

What?  It’s like this.  All the models and 2D SVG artwork I’ve created looks just right, but the thickness of bevels and extrusions in the real examples have made everything a little bit fatter than expected.  This is a trial and error process, but the bottom line is, it the weights are perfect in the SVG artwork and 3D model (I’m using Blender) they’ll probably be a little bit too fat when the 3D print gets delivered.  We’re talking small amounts here, do a siting test to gauge it then work backwards.  This issue really effects finer type and lines, if everything is a quite big (say characters 1cm high) it’s not so much of an issue, but if you’re working in 5mm or less, it’s very noticeable.

3) Stress test the prototypes…

My first prototype ethanols got a wiggle / bend test.  The ‘strong and flexible’ plastic finish was fine - tough enough.  The frosted detail version snapped off (see the pics in the blog).  That’s great - I needed to know which materials would be robust enough for smaller size / detail designs, and how that would affect usage in everyday life.  The last thing you want is to get a whole load of pieces returned by pissed off customers who snapped it by accident.

4) Life test the prototypes…

Right now I’ve got a Higgs Boson keyring in my pocket.  I’m going to see how it works out for toughness.  The wife is wearing her YummyMummy necklace all over the place to see how it feels too.  Here’s some initial feedback - the YummyMummy is a bit too thick and weighty (1 cm deep extrusion) and it’s completely flat.  A slight curve on the Y axis so it moulds a little bit to the throat/neck area would help that, plus thinning down the depth to change the weight.  The only way you can get that kind of feedback is to test with real people.  Let’s see how the keyring works out…

I’ll update these more as they develop.  Watch this space…

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