This week, we did 3D printing. I decided to make a minimalist bobblehead of myself.
Making the spring!
I first designed a spring in Fusion 360. I made the shape square rather than round because I knew the base had be flat anyway when the 3D print was done.
Printing the spring
Cleaning up the spring
Due to the extensive supports, there was a lot of cleanup involved. Very difficult cleanup.
I took off the major pieces with pliers, but everything waw still rough.
I then used an exacto knife to slice off more of the support and finally used sandpaper to smooth it all down.
Scanning my head
I tried using the Artec 3D Space Spider to get a scan of my head but it was unable to get a good scan and captured too much noise.
Knowing that the iPhone X has a built-in infared depth camera for the Face ID feature, I ended up using my phone to take the scan of my head. I tried a number of different apps, but the one that worked best was Bellus 3D – which specializes in face scanning.
After a couple hours of trial and error, here is the result!
Printing my head
The final product
The verdict on additive vs subtractive methods
While removing the supports was a definite pain, I don’t think these pieces could have been made nearly as easily with subtractive methods. The spring in particular has a ton of empty space in between which would be hard for say a CNC machine to do. Additionally, PLA was an excellent material to make the spring out of as it was the right balance between firmness and flexibility.