So I am in my last year of computer science and I have to make a project to be judged by a committee. Being so interested in 3d printers I thought about making a classic ewaste 3d printer as you can see here:
Sounds easy right? For some reason most of the people I talked to don’t seem to know how simple and easy a 3d printer actually is… so this sounds like a easy and impressive project to make for them to get more interested and start to know more about this technology.
So my problem is…this is not enough for me. I feel like I am cheating my way through this thing by doing a “step 1 do this step 2 do this” tutorial for my project. Seeing as these small and cheap 3d printers have really small print surfaces I started thinking… what if I want to print something bigger? So I started searching on the web and came to the conclusion (I might be wrong and in that case please tell me if there is something that can do that) that if someone wants to print something bigger than the printing bed they have to open some sort of 3d editing software and do it by hand…so if you have something really big you have to split that object in a lot of parts. That doesn’t sound that appealing right?
So I thought, why not have a program or an extension of a slicer that would just do that for you. That sounds interesting and could save a lot of cumbersome editing and make things a lot easier.
So basically I’m thinking of doing this as a second part to my project. A piece of software that will cut your object into as many parts as you want having the input the length width and height of the printing space or something like that and it will cut it to fit into it (preferably it could have some sort of jigsaw extension so you wont have to necessarily glue them if you don’t need full integrity or to give it even more support).
So what do you guys think? Would you see this as something useful? Do you think that this is hard to do and I’m just way over my head thinking that it is actually doable? Would you use this?
TL;DR: I want to make a program that could slice a 3d object that couldn’t fit into your printing space so you can print GODZILLA or something big because I couldn’t find something similar on the inter-webs and/or I can’t even google.
imho, 3D printers were buzzing 2 years ago. They're not that exciting anymore. You won't turn any heads just by splicing an object up into multiple prints.
\constructive criticism
If you want to do something with 3D printers, find an innovative way to USE them. These days everybody has a 3D printer, but few people know how to actually apply them effectively. It's like the raspberry pi, everybody has one, but nobody uses them for anything interesting.
@fredrich_nietze that's not the point, not the 3d printer is. The point is being able to print stuff bigger than the printer, being it one made out of legos or dvd-roms or an ultimaker. so the point is that this kid could be able to print a bigger printer or even a spoiler for his dad's car or whatever.
@eidolonFIRE it's ok I can take criticism. well won't this be able to make something that someone with little to no tech knowledge be able to print big stuff? (ie not knowing what a 3d editor even is and just wanting to print something bigger and you give it 3 parameters or even select from some premade ones like popular printers) this way someone could feel less constricted by the 3d printer and take on more bold things instead of just little things that can fit inside there. most 3d objects are made to fit in approx 30x30x30 space, object makers don't really go further to make something else. this way they could maybe do some cool stuff like s body for your motorbike or some window frame or actual useful stuff that are inherently bigger than the average 3d printer. thanks for the suggestion, I will try to think about some possible alternatives that could help people print cooler/ more useful stuff
i do not have the time right now and will look more extensively when i am home but i looked a little at James Bruton's youtube channel. It seems like he does this by hand. He makes the parts and he splits them by hand. I might not have looked too deep yet but if that is the case this is not what i want to do because any 3d editing software is able to help you do this. I want it to happen automatically. of course there could be some items and shapes that could give me some problems like splitting the item in weak-spots and/or in some weird way. I will check his channel more and will come back after I am pretty sure that i know if he can split stuff without actually doing "work"