While learning about 3D Printing, I was most intrigued by the possibility to modify and repair existing products. While there is an amazing community with lots of good and free models around, naturally I came to a point where I did not find what I was looking for readily designed. I realized this is an essential skill for effectively operating not just 3D Printers, but any productive machine really.
Since youtube was the place I was learning all about 3D Printing, and all the people that I looked up to there were using Fusion 360 as their CAD Program that’s what I got into.
In hindsight, that was a pretty good choice and I am in love with the abilities parametric design gives me.
Below you will find some of my designs.
The process is something that I enjoy a lot and wish to dive into deeper.
By trial and error, I already learned a lot about designing specifically for 3D Printing, but I often feel that there are many aesthetic considerations in design that I am not familiar with.
I want to broaden my general ability to design physical objects, which is something I hope to gain during my master’s.
Besides coming up with new objects, incorporating the real world is also an interest of mine.
### Interaction with real objects and environments
In the last few years I have played around with a few smartphone cameras and was always quite sad, that my scans were never quite accurate enough to do cool stuff with them. I could not really afford real 3D scanner and had already started cobbling together a raspberry Pi camera with a cheap TOF sensor, which is a simple, but not quite as good replacement for a laser or a lidar sensor, but then Apple came out with the first phones with accessible Lidar sensor.
Recently, through work at the university I got access to a device with a lidar sensor and started having fun with it.
See some examples here:
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This last one was scanned with just my smartphone camera. You can see that the quality is notably worse, but considering is was created with just a single, run-of-the-mill smartphone sensor, I think it is still pretty impressive and will certainly do something towards democratizing such technologies and abilities.
What this section is supposed to deliver is the message that I am currently not where I want to be navigating the vast possibilities of CAD. I feel confident enough to approach small repairs around the flat with a new perspective, but I still lack technical expertise when approaching a collection composite parts, having to function together. I still have lots of projects halfdone or half-thought and one major reason is that there is no real critical exchange within my field of study.
I want more than designing figurines or wearables.
I want to incorporate 3D printing as a method to extend the abilities of other tools, have mechanical and electrical purposes, be foodsafe and engaging.
I fell in love with the idea of designing a toy system, inspired by [Makeways on Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/makeway/makeway-create-intricate-courses-watch-your-marbles-soar), I have already started adding my own parts to their set.
I dream of my very own 3D printed coffeecup, one that is both foodsafe and dishwasher-surviving. For that, I would have to do quite a bit of material research, but that just makes the idea so much more appealing.
I would love finding a material composition incorporating waste to stop relying on plastics, or at least on fossile plastics.
Once in Berlin, I would want to talk to the people at [Kaffeform](https://www.kaffeeform.com/en/) producing largely compostable Coffee Cups incorporating a significant amount of old ground espresso, albeit using injection molding for their process.
The industry selling composite filaments is much more conservative with the percentage of non-plastic additives, because with a nozzle extrusion process there is much more to go wrong.
Still, I would love to explore that avenue further and think there is a lot to be gained from looking at pellet printers.
I also credit huge parts of my exploration process into local recycling to the awesome people at [Precious Plastic](https://preciousplastic.com), who I will join over the summer to learn more about their system.
I find it hard to write anything about CAD without connecting it directly to a manufacturing process.
And I believe that's a good thing. Always tying a design process to its realization, grounds the process and attaches to it some immediacy.
For me to become more confident in this process, I am still missing more expertise in organic shapes, so I would be happy to dig more into Blender, an awesome tool that in my mind is far too powerful to dive into it with just youtube lessons.
<aclass="colored external"href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lvonasek.arcore3dscanner&hl=en&gl=US">3D Live Scanner for Android</a>
