The low end printers have a long way to go, before they would be considered useful for the general public. People wouldn't be interested in the machine unless it made items that looked perfect. Those days are coming, but when is anybodies guess.
Here is some more...
I thought you guys would like to see more process. The long two piece part is the accelerator, the one in Al's documents was way off. That's understandable it's not that simple a part. I was really racking my brains as to how to create it.
Here is the original part, sadly it was modified from it's original state. Why is anybodies guess, most likely to make the SSM follow a set of fan made plans(that's what some of us think). This is the part I wanted to recreate.
I knew I was going to make the rail down the middle in styrene. So I sized it accordingly, to fit in a center channel. But I still had the problem of the rest of it.
That's where this tool comes in...
This a 3D scanner, now before people start screaming digital recasting. It's not that easy(I only wish it was). It scans to a maximum resolution of .004", an object is placed on a turntable, and the object is traced by a laser. But since it uses a laser there is problems in the laser scattering(the laser sees best with a matte light gray surface, but it still isn't perfect, I didn't paint this part). And that effects the scan, which means a lot work on the other end.
Here is what the raw scan looks like...
This was scanned from a part I know is accurate, the reason there is blank spots is the laser couldn't scan those sections. Because of the part's orientation in the scanner. I took this file and opened it in Rino...
Above is a rendering of the part in Rino.
Here is the scan data next to profiles that were taken off of the accelerator. In this pic the contours look good, but they are not, and they have to be redrawn, which means things are going to change. Plus this part scan is useless to me, it would not sit on the saucer I machined(not without a lot of modification). Besides I only cared about the part profiles.
My goal was not making an exact reproduction of this part, but to make a new part to match my model. Since the profiles were incomplete I filled in the missing sections.
Here is the completed part in rendered in Rino...
See how it doesn't look quite right, that's a remnant of tracing the contours. Really I could care less, because I'm going to fix that in the printed part. All I needed was something to work from. If you look at the printed part it does look a little wonky. It's nothing that a bit of sanding couldn't correct. Another thing I did was rescale the part for the model, the part I scanned was about half the size of what I needed. The printed part was split so it would fit in my printer.
Like I said I was only after the part's contours, I hope I have shown that it isn't an exact copy of the part. I do not condone recasting, the idea that you can use my scanner to make an exact copy of a part is nearly impossible. I couldn't get that good a scan off of a part. No matter what I do I still have to recreate what I'm scanning. Which means it's going to change. I have directly printed parts from my scanner, normally it has very poor results.
To answer the question of where I put these parts. The printed parts are in my modeling room, the routed parts are in my garage(they stand easily on one end). Right now I'm rearranging my garage for this project. Lucky for me my router works on it's own, so I'm free to get other stuff done.
One other thing, Bondo is really nasty stuff, a router can be a better dust producer than sanding. My machine is contained and I have a exhaust system. Anybody using my techniques use with caution. I can't take any responsibility for what someone else does.
