From Imaginary to Real World

So, the plane flies. Now we need to put the 3D camera stand on it!

But the stand has quite a bit of weight to it, not to mention it's not exactly a "plug and play" part for the plane.  Solution?

Make a holder for the stand for the camera :P And the easiest was to do it? Print it :D

So it's another skill we're learning here. And to learn it, let's make a simple spacer for the rods, to test the process and the scale of the printed product.

The process is "simple" ...

Step 1: design the part. In our case, we're going to use Blender.

It's free, it's powerful and (after checking some tutorials) the newer version has a 3D printing toolbox which saves some trouble. But in out case, we just used a measurement plugin to to check the distances. Once you're done, change Blender Units to Metric Units and export as .STL file.

Step 2: check the part for errors. In our case, we're going to use netfabb.

Very powerful and expensive software for 3D printer modelling and prepping, but the free version let's you do some simple editing and error checking. We fix any holes in the part, set the correct scale (turns out Blender to Metric conversion is 1 Blender Unit to 1 m not 1 mm) and export the now checked and ready .STL file.

Step 3: slice the file so the printer can print it. In our case we're going to use Slic3r.

No screenshot here, but you're not missing much, just the settings for your printer. Hope everything is calibrated and now you can get your .gcode file for the printer.

Step 4: print it. In our case we're going to use RepRapPro Mandel 3D printer and Pronterface program.

Nothing to do here, but wait and see what comes out.

And once it's done printing and you let your parts cool down, you get something like this:

Not bad for the first try. Some quick measurements and we have almost exactly what we wanted. Turns out that he melted plastic and the resolution of the printer "blurred" the part ever so slightly.

The hole was supposed to be exactly 10mm, but it came out 9.5mm. Which means the plastic in our case expands 0.25mm outside the designed boundary, which is not bad at all.

Step 5: optionally (but in our case mandatory) process the part with some sand paper or a drill.

Slightly smoothing and enlarging the hole and we have a perfect fit:

And now that we know how, let's start on the real thing! What is "the real thing"? join us next time and see for your self.