3D Printing quirk

[wibblywobbly]

I stumbled across this little trick while playing around with things.

1. Take an overhead photo of a sprue.
2. Edit the jpg to remove the sprue and leave the parts.
3. Enlarge the jpg so that the parts are 1/16 scale.
4. Change the colours to greyscale.
5. Open Cura.
6. Load the jpg straight into Cura.
7. It magically transforms the 2D image into a 3D model.
8. In theory this can be saved as a Gcode file and printed.

I haven't gone beyond 7 yet, as my printer is packed away for a house move, but if this works, then simply drawing the part, saving the drawing as a jpg and loading it into Cura will produce a 3D part that can be printed. The only rule that I can think of is that the part colour would have to be different to the background colour.

The following pics probably explain what happened better than I described it. The quality of the Cura generated part would possibly be better if it was generated from a line drawing as it is picking up all of the textures in the original photo. There is a smoothing option that tidied it up a bit.

[AlwynTurner]

WOW..................
That could be really useful, this I have to try.

Well done Rob.
Alwyn

[Tankbear]

My flashforge slicer software does that, can also change the settings for colour - depth etc.

Looks good on screen but not bothered printing out yet. Was playing with the Mad club logo to make into a trophy for our IR battles.

Ian

[Raminator]

Can 3D printer CAD programs use heightmaps? I know there are a bunch of utilities that can generate heightmaps, normal maps and bump maps from photos; you'd be able to replicate surface detail and shapes, then.

[Tankbear]

That is a good idea.

Not certain if you use a cad package or another modelling software, i.e. Kind which does models for computer games, animations, etc.

I know my slicer software which converts files so the printer can print it accepts .stl files which typically are cad models and .obj which appear to be what is used for computer animations, games, etc. So in theory if the photo height map software can convert to .obj it should work.

Ian

[RobW]

Very useful, good spot.

I suspect it's a pixellation approach, same as used in medical scanners, and it's looking for the greyscale contrast. So, it'll work best if you pick a good (black & white) contrast colour. If the CAD tool then has repair features you can recreate/repair the features and extrude to give the 3D features. Check the length dimensions & shape incase you pick up a perspective error - you might be better taking the picture at a distance with a good lens.

Bit surprised it works on jpeg, as didn't think that used a pixel data structure - I've always had to use bitmap.

[971wright]

Hi Riprap do a scanner for just over a hundred pounds , you could put 1/35 scale parts scan it and scale up. or put 1/16 scale parts on.


regards pete