Comments on: 3D printer jargon in action

By: pfunked

pfunked — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

As a Shapeways and Blender user, I can attest to how useful this page actually is. But it’s definitely hard to understand — check their forums at any moment to see people having trouble uploading non-manifold meshes.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What a surprise to find this in my RSS feed. I wrote this article. It began life as a forum posting I wrote on the Shapeways forums after struggling (over the course of several weeks) with trying to create a printable mesh. It’s a frustrating process that is hard to find good information about, so once I came up with a process that worked, I thought I’d share what I had figured out with other Blender users who wanted to use Shapeways’ printing services.

The Shapeways folks seem to have found it useful. They did a little editing, added the illustrations, and posted it (with my consent).

Not sure if I should be flattered or offended at having it help up as “jargonny”, though…

By: kiint

kiint — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is not so much 3D printer jargon as just 3D jargon, plain and simple. Much of this could easily just be instructions for a polygonal/sub-d modeling app. Much of this could also be in the magazine rack in the bathroom at my house.

By: randwolf

randwolf — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Water-tight” originally comes from injection molding, and referred to a mold that didn’t leak.

“Manifold” is a mathematical term, and refers to the surface that bounds a volume; a non-manifold mesh is one that can’t actually be printed, since it doesn’t describe a solid.

By: devophill

devophill — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not an expert, but yes. And yes.

By: danielcolascione

danielcolascione — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Manifold? Pah. I demand a printer that can give me a Klein bottle!

By: Xaq

Xaq — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Oh man, I love you, BoingBoing. The first time I saw RepRap mentioned on here, it inspired me to build my own at school. Yesterday night I was clawing my eyes out over this EXACT issue, and now here are the answers. How did you know?

By: cowtown

cowtown — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry for the threadjack, but I finally had to mosey on over from Google Reader and ask, “Is the RSS feed for BBG now just a subset of the main BB one?”

I don’t recall seeing anything mentioning a change, but I also don’t remember seeing stuff lately that was on BBG but not BB. So, is it safe to remove BBG from my reader?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

‘Manifold’ does not mean “bounds a volume”. Indeed, many objects that don’t enclose a volume are manifold.
For example, in 3d, a simple open plane with zero thickness is a perfect 2d manifold (like an open line is a 1d manifold).

These are not good for 3d printing, really. But then, being manifold is not the only property a mesh must exhibit to be usable as an input to a 3d printer (it must enclose a volume indeed, but a surface can enclose a volume and be non-manifold at the same time).

I urge interested peeps to read the wikipedia article on the term ‘manifold’ or head over to the mathworld one.

Btw, if you want to avoid issues with non-manifold topology, use a modeling app that guarantees manifold meshes.
An easy & fun to use one, even for kids, is Wings3d (http://www.wings3d.com/). Wings is FOSS too, comes pre-built for all major platforms and can export STL straight away (the format unfortunately used by most 3d printing services).

By: Tynam

Tynam — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@danielcolascione: Trust me, you don’t want one. Unclogging a jammed four-dimensional print head is a bitch.

By: nanuq

nanuq — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Trust me, you don’t want one. Unclogging a jammed four-dimensional print head is a bitch.”

Especially since you have to unclog it before it jams.