It's taken quite a while but I've finally started working on Version 2 of my scanner. Something a little more polished, modular so it can be dissembled for storage or shipping, and a design that can be assembled as a kit.
I recently picked up a 3D printer to help with this and I've been spending my time leaning the in's and out's of the printing world. Figuring out what is possible, best practices and doing test prints of super important stuff like Bender here. :)
Now that I have a good grasp of printing, the first task is to start at the beginning and figure out the eight side panels everything else is built on. To make this modular and a kit these panels need to easily attach together and break down for storage, but be a solid base. I'm also trying to keep the scanner the same size so each panel is a 12in x 12in square.
So my first thoughts were to stay with foam core for the panels as it's light, cheap, and ridged enough. So I would need to replace the solid wood frame with something else. I came up with a dovetail rail that on one side had a slot for the foam core panel and on the other a dovetail joint allowing the panels to slide together locking them in place. This involved a bunch of iterations to have a shape that could be printed well and test prints to get the tolerances just right so the joints weren't too tight or too loose. Also trying different print settings to speed and quality.
The final prints were done at 0.4mm resolution. Even though this was pretty coarse it cut the print time in 1/2 and as long as the dovetail pieces were printed vertically the resolution was still high enough to have a good joint. If printed on their side the parts of the piece that were angled suffered from pretty bad stair stepping.
Once I had a design that worked I printed out a small scale test and it came out pretty good.
There is one issue though, the time to print the full scale pieces would just take too long.
This scale test of eight pieces took 2hrs, and the full scan for all eight panels would take something like 5 days... just not particle. If I was injection molding the parts on a assembly line it wouldn't be a issue but I'm not so its back to the drawing board. I'm thinking of moving to 1/4 wood panels with wood frames so the panels are structurally sound and just need to be held together. Cutting wood strips on the table saw is a much faster process :)
Stay tunes for more updates and if you got this far thanks for reading.