![123d design shell 123d design shell](https://tutorial45.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Design-Autodesk-123D-Design14.png)
While this allowed all the light to escape and illuminate the room, most of the detail was difficult to see in both the on and off settings. Initially I began with a Natural PLA from eSUN, which is a bit like frosted glass when printed. Each of these lights are the main, or only, sources of light in the spaces they are installed, so they need to provide a good amount of light.Īs shown above, 3 different materials/finishes were trialled. One of the steps that took a bit of experimentation was choosing the right material in order to look good when the light was both on and off. Overall, this meant that each light took ~32 hours to print. Where support material is removed is always going to be messy, and you wouldn’t want to have these surfaces being the most visible. Support material is necessary with the light printed with the neck down – this is the best orientation in terms of ensuring the surfaces visible when standing below the light (remember, it is ceiling mounted) are the best.
![123d design shell 123d design shell](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/80/a2/2580a2aafea4ade314e7da21e36281dd.png)
In terms of print settings, I stuck with some pretty typical settings for PLA, including a 0.2mm layer height. As you can see below, the shell is only slightly smaller in the X and Y dimensions than the build plate. Then the separate parts are joined together using Boolean Union, and the design is finished.Īs well as the new design needing to fit the geometry of the existing light fixture, it also needed to fit the build volume of the 3D printer – in this case a Prusa i3 MK3S.
#123d design shell free#
I cheated slightly and modelled this in Autodesk Fusion 360 (also free if you’re a student), but you could use Meshmixer – it would just take a bit longer to get accurate measurements.
#123d design shell skin#
![123d design shell 123d design shell](http://tutorial45.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Design-Autodesk-123D-Design6.png)
The process took a little time, but has been outlined in 6 basic steps below: Additionally, it’s quite useful when you are working with 3D scan files, which are typically a mesh like a STL or OBJ. If you don’t have access to expensive CAD programs, good news this project was completely designed in free software! I’ve used Autodesk Meshmixer for many of my tutorials and posts, it’s a surprisingly powerful tool and a must for anyone involved in 3D printing. However, as anyone familiar with 3D scanning will know, this model is just a skin with no thickness or solid geometry, and was just the starting point for the design process. This resulted in a full-colour, highly detailed model of the shell, as shown to the right.
#123d design shell pro#
I n this post I’ll go over the main processes and experiments I went through to get the finished product, but in case you’re just here for the big finale, here’s the link so you can download the final Sea Urchin Light exclusively from my Pinshape account and 3D print as many as you like! 3D ScanningĪs explained in further detail in my previous post, I used an EinScan Pro 2X Plus 3D scanner, which included a turntable to automatically capture all angles of the sea urchin shell. At the time I didn’t know what I’d do with it, but fast forward a year and I’ve found a perfect application turning the sea urchin shell into ceiling light covers in my house. About a year ago I posted about 3D scanning some shells, and as part of the scanning I captured a sea urchin shell. This project has been a little while in the making and it’s exciting to finally be writing about it.