Project 2: 3D Printing Midterm

Zane Alberts 3-D Printing Midterm

Concept

As a fairly practical person by nature, I decided to come up with something I would actually use if I were to have it. Knowing I have a problem with organization and have many papers spewing across my desk, I thought perhaps a paperweight would be useful in this case. Fairly basic and easy to create, I nonetheless wanted to give the creation a little bit of visual interest. In order to be heavy enough to hold down paper, I figured a bottom heavy design would be best, not to mention one not overly tall or wide. Having worked with 3D printing in the past (I had an engineering class in highscool centered around this, we used the CAD program if you were interested), I know that intricacy is not very easy to accomplish with the cheaper printing options available to me, and often can take away from the overall look. Thus, I went with a simple, yet effective creation.

Process

Well, technically, I began with a completely different concept in mind called the "eye cannon", however it was both too large and too impractical to be worth making. For the paperweight, I begna with a simple cube, 2x2, in Rhino. I created a cylinder from the base rising up to 3 inches high, overlapping with the cube. It was slightly overlarge and stuck out of the sides of the cube, so I rectified that. Then I made a sphere at the very top of the cylinder, creating a dome atop my glorious paperweight. Following this, I bonded all of the shapes together via boolean union. Completing the design is naturally the eye socket coming from the dome, which I accomplished by placing a sphere against the dome and using a subtraction based boolean union. Then, I checked for any naked edges (there were none, though I expected some inside the socket), and transferred my creation over to keyshot for rendering. 

Materials

In Keyshot, I chose a slightly unconventional cartoon material for my piece, as I felt the simple style and exaggerated smoothness of toon made it quite appealing to look at. The color was an improvisation, as seafoam green is one of the color's I've grown to tolerate more and more as of late. When printed, I chose white due to a greater opportunity to paint and customize, not to mention being a very no nonsense color. The material itself was acrylic.