Jpg to 3d print

3D modeling can be intimidating for a beginner. And this is one of those cases where creating 3D models from 2D images can be the most appropriate way to get acquainted with the world of 3D printing. Currently, there are several ways to convert JPG and PNG files to STL files in order to get a 3D model from an image.

But before we get into these methods, let's talk about what they are not. While it is true that 3D models can be created from flat images, the methods described in this article do not allow you to create complete, detailed 3D models. Instead, the proposed options are more suitable for making a flat 2D image three-dimensional, which will still require refinement.

So if you're wondering if you can immediately get a bust of Mona Lisa using her image, the answer is no (so you have to spend time and effort on further post-processing of the resulting 3D model). But this does not mean that the methods below are useless!

Option 1 - 3D Builder (Windows)

The first and probably the easiest option is to use the 3D Builder application, which is preinstalled on almost any modern Windows computer. The app has a feature that can convert an image to STL or OBJ file very easily. Please note that this option is only for Windows 10 users. Here's how to do it:

• If you don't already have the 3D Builder app on your computer, download it from the Microsoft Store.
• Once you have downloaded and installed the application, drag the image into the workspace, or click "Add" from the "Insert" menu and select an image.
• Adjust the "Levels" and "Smooth" sliders until the image is crisp and clear. You can also switch between "Contour", "Height Map", "Edge", and "Stamp" settings to add various useful effects.
• When you are happy with the 3D model, click the "Import Image" button. Here you can change the scale using the "Scale" tool at the bottom of the workspace. When scaling, it is recommended to lock the aspect ratio by clicking the lock icon in the same menu.

Option 2 - Cura

If you don't have a Windows PC, the second option is to use Ultimaker's Cura built-in feature. The tool is not as powerful as in 3D Builder, but works great. It's also a great option for those who generally use Cura for slicing because you don't have to export and import the model in different applications.

• Download the Ultimaker Cura slicer from the Ultimaker website if you are not already using it.
• Import the image into Cura by dragging it into the workspace.
• When you have imported an image, a menu with other settings will appear. Here you can change the height, width, thickness, smoothness, and more.
• Finally, you can export it as STL or OBJ by clicking "File" then "Export" or you can cut it directly for 3D printing.

Option 3 - Litophane Converter

Another way to convert an image into a file for 3D printing is to make Litophane. What is lithophane, you ask? Litophane is a three-dimensional object that, due to the difference in thickness, changes the amount of transmitted light. These differences in thickness create dark and light parts of the image that appear to be "embedded" into the object. Thus, the image is only visible when there is light from behind, and it cannot consist of more than one color.

There are many ways to make lithophane, but the easiest is to use the online image to lithophane converter, a much more powerful tool with more settings and better results than Cura's image to 3D model conversion method.

• Click on the "Images" menu and upload the image to the site.
• Select the shape of your lithophane from the "Model" menu.
• Go to "Settings" then "Model Settings". Change "Maximum Size" to the largest size you think you can scale the image to.
• Go to "Settings", "Image Settings". There are many different settings you can change here, but the only change needed is the first "Positive image" slider.
• Go back to the "Model" menu and click "Refresh" and then upload. If you are going to 3D print the resulting litophane, it is important to print it vertically with 100% infill.

3D wax printing on FDM 3D printer. Recommendations and settings on the example of 3D printer PICASO Designer X.

1. 1. First a little history of
2. 2. What is Filamentarno Wax Base?
3. 3. Which printer is suitable for printing?
4. 4. How good is Picaso Designer X for Wax Base printing?
5. 5. Preparing Picaso Designer X before printing Wax Base
6. 6. Printing process
7. 7. Result and output

Hello friends, 3DTool is with you!

Investment casting is a fairly popular method of manufacturing metal products. Most of the jewelry is produced in this way, this method is used to create parts of mechanisms, cases and other elements and assemblies that require increased strength. The starting point in the casting process is the original model or ready-made matrix, from which a copy is made from wax or other easily melted material to create shell molds into which the metal is already poured. But what if we bypass the initial model creation phase and make an immediately meltable wax model? This is where 3D printing and new material from 9 come to the rescue.0090 Filamentarno - Wax Base .

1. A little history first

The idea of ​​printing waxes on a 3D printer is far from new, initially, the technology appeared in the camp of photopolymer 3D printers, was used, and is still used today, for example, by such giants as 3D Systems and Solidscape . Entire lines of devices have been honed to produce high-precision lost wax printouts with a perfect surface. However, such printers had and still have one tangible minus - what if the desired object is much larger than the size of the working area of ​​the device, and the quality of the surface, in general, does not matter much within reasonable limits? The first thing that comes to mind is to find a device with a larger working area, however, among photopolymer printers, there are negligible models that meet this requirement and, basically, they are sharpened precisely for high quality and miniaturization. Or too expensive to maintain. What to do? But what if you use FDM for these purposes?

Photo from open sources, site sapr.ru

The first experiments with FDM 3D-printed/lost-waxed models used PLA and PMMA, the relatively low ash content of which, in theory, promised to achieve good casting quality, and some enthusiasts actually achieved quite good results. Instead of smelting, however, the technique of burning the material was used. However, widespread practice has shown too high a dependence of the result on the quality of the material, the presence or absence of a dye, the correct temperature regime and a strong limitation on the equipment and materials forming the shell form, not all of which withstand subsequent annealing and do not burst. Moreover, the crust-forming compound is able to transfer even the smallest defects and artifacts on the surface and any spills, cavities and flaws immediately appear on the final result. And avoiding the formation of unwanted gases when burning PLA is very difficult.

Photo from open sources, site sapr.ru

And if large-format casting in industrial, factory conditions allows the use of PLA and PMMA, due to the complication of production technology (there is a wide practice of using such giants of the world of FDM printers as BigRep for these purposes), then medium-sized workshops and small studios equipped with conventional boilerclaves require more flexible approach. And it is in this case that the Wax Base is perfect for them.

2. What is Filamentarno Wax Base?

Filamentarno WAX Base is a filament for 3D printing using FDM technology for subsequent investment casting from metals, the bulk of which is real jewelry wax. Of course, the composition contains other impurities to stabilize the rod and meet its characteristics in accordance with the requirements of fdm 3d printing, however, the final result is fully compatible with any melting techniques of conventional wax compositions and is easily glued to them, for example, to form sprues.

The company F ilamentarno took a long time to produce this material, the idea appeared a relatively long time ago, but the results were achieved only in the last couple of years, nevertheless, the sensation was such that the company even had to open a small 3D printing studio in order to gain experience applications and respond to the market demand since there were no analogues to this material before.

The material turned out to be promising, among its advantages there is a sharp increase in the maximum possible size of wax waxes, and printing speed, as well as the ability to greatly reduce costs, because the cost of melted wax in the form of a thread turned out to be much more profitable than photopolymer, not to mention the price of photopolymer 3D printers.

This material also has certain features that can hardly be called obvious disadvantages, but they impose strict requirements on the device on which it is planned to print. More about them below.

3. Which printer is suitable for printing?

Due to the physical characteristics of the raw material, Filamentarno Wax Base is printed at significantly lower temperatures than other materials. Softening occurs already at ~ 45 degrees, and melting, from ~ 95 degrees Celsius. Because of this, it can be easily smoothed out in post-processing using hot air guns, torches or soldering stations. The recommended printing range is from 110 to 130 degrees, while most standard 3D printers do not allow the extruder temperature to drop below 190, less often 170 degrees Celsius, which is excessive in the case of Wax base .

Owners of simpler and cheaper models of 3D printers, as a rule, have the opportunity to correct the corresponding parameters in the printer's hardware firmware, or lower the temperature using special control commands. Meanwhile, expensive brands usually do not provide such opportunities and completely close both the firmware and the “console” commands from users from changes. Here is what the manufacturer writes on its website in the description of the material in this case:

“Most often printing on a 3D printer with a nozzle temperature below 170°C is prohibited by the printer firmware. To bypass this limitation, use the G-Code command: "M302 S80" - it can be inserted into the starting G-Code in the slicer settings. This command will lower the print temperature limit to 80°C."

Also, since the material is quite easily torn, soft and melts easily even at low Cold End heating temperatures, you will need to use a direct extruder drive (Direct) for printing, a remote (Bowden) broaching mechanism will not cope with the task and, at best, will “jam » material.

Nevertheless, at least one manufacturing company that took care of printing with low-temperature materials “out of the box” and has printing units equipped with direct drive, we can definitely name. Of course, we are talking about the manufacturer of 3D printers Picaso3D and line of 3D printers Designer Series X .

Let's take a look at the benefits of the Series X line for wax printing using the Picaso 3D Designer X as an example .

4. How good is Picaso Designer X for Wax Base printing?

In addition to the ability to set extremely low extruder temperatures for FDM 3D printing in material profiles, the Series X platform has a number of additional features that make working with the Wax Base easier.

First of all, it is the adjustable temperature of the cold zone (thermal barrier) of the printing unit. It has another temperature sensor that allows you to monitor and adjust peak performance by increasing and decreasing the cooling cooler speed.

This feature prevents the formation of plugs in the extruder tube above the melt zone. The special structure of the receiving "neck" in the pulling mechanism also plays into the hands, which eliminates the bending of the material during filling and printing.

In addition, the system of active “purging” of the working area, thanks to several turbine fans, allows you to quickly cool the material during printing, which also has a positive effect on the quality of the surface when printing roundings and overhanging elements.

And sensors for the presence of filament and control of the upper layer will help prevent damage to many hours of printing in the event of a break or end of the thread.

5. Preparing Picaso Designer X for printing Wax Base

To confidently print Wax Base on your device, you need to stock up on a clean, preferably new, extruder block with a new or carefully cleaned copper nozzle with a diameter of at least 0.4mm. In our case, the most suitable in the Picaso Designer X line is the 0.5 nozzle.

It is also necessary to take into account the following nuances:

• A rubber scraper is installed on Picaso 3D printers to clean the PG - when printing WAX, it smears the material and harms rather than benefits, it must be removed.

• For normal adhesion, the heating table on the first layer must be heated to 85-90 degrees, subsequent layers must be set to 0-30 degrees so as not to deform the wax. To do this, you need to have two different material profiles.

• Airflow - required when printing overhanging elements, the main thing is not to overdo it, otherwise the layers will not bake well.

• Wax, like many elastomers, does not like retracts, this parameter must be set to 0.

• Refilling plastic takes place in two stages. The first is filling at an elevated temperature of 190-200 degrees, to eliminate a possible wax plug. The second stage is filling at the extrusion temperature - 110-130C

• It must be remembered that plastic is very sensitive to extrusion temperature, too high clogs the nozzle, too low gives poor interlayer adhesion. The optimum temperature for picaso designer x is 115 degrees for the first layer, 120-125 degrees for subsequent ones.

• Periodically, it is necessary to check whether the plastic thread wound on the spool does not stick to itself, this can cause material slippage, because. it pulls out easily.

• It is very important to correctly set the height of the nozzle above the table, because if the nozzle is pinched, a plug will quickly form in the extruder, which can be eliminated only by refilling the plastic again.

Before printing for the first time, be sure to replace the entire hot end or nozzle with a new / clean one, otherwise the desired result will not be achieved.

When preparing a 3D model for printing at Polygon X , you must adhere to the following rules, try not to make the outer wall very thin, the material may burst. The ideal option is 2 perimeters, approximately 1.2 mm, with a nozzle of 0.5

Percentage of filling, not less than 15%, if the geometry of the model allows.

Otherwise, the requirements for the material are the same as for conventional plastics. It should be noted that the supports come off very easily and, if necessary, the attachment point can be treated with a burner or a building hair dryer in order to achieve a smooth surface.

We printed the current models at the following settings (pictured above).

It remains to create two print profiles for printing the first and subsequent layers, send them to the printer and wait for the print results.

6. 3D printing process

Before printing, be sure to thoroughly rinse the glass stage bed and apply fresh adhesive to it. In our case, a regular spray adhesive from PICASO 3D is suitable, however, the manufacturer also offers a proprietary adhesive:

Next, you need to prepare two print profiles according to the following settings, experimentally they showed the best result when printing.

Wax3D_F - profile for subsequent layers, Wax3D(1Layer) for the first.

When rendering the model, be sure to manually set a pause after the second layer in order to have time to switch print profiles.

If you have previously printed with wax on the current printer, you need to start another profile with a higher temperature and load the material only after the old material has “melted through”.

Leaving material in the nozzle at high temperatures is not recommended. This is fraught with traffic jams.

7. Result and conclusion

When printing, we encountered several times the delamination and peeling off of the material from the heating table during the printing process and the selection of parameters.

As you can see in the photo, the material diverges in layers and it may feel that the temperature is insufficient for sintering. However, this is not the case, because when the temperature rises, the material does not extrude, but flows out of the die, which disrupts the layer structure, and the wax does not have time to cool. The difference is clearly visible in the photo below, on the left the temperature is too high.

However, after several reprints, we managed to achieve good print quality. Both with and without support.

The material withstands rather steep angles of inclination "perfectly", as can be seen from this flange in the photo.

The artistic approach is not alien to the material, we printed the head of this character for about a day and, as you can see, the result is excellent.

In general, when printing products with low detail, it is best to select a slow (quality profile) or medium (standard profile) print speed setting so that the material has time to properly form and cool during extrusion. Otherwise, sagging "pulling" of the thread may form.

Based on the results of our experiments, we confirmed the expectations regarding the ease of use of Picaso 3D Designer X for printing Wax Base , this 3D printer is ideal for this kind of tasks and in the portfolio of our customers there are already several successful examples of using this bundle in production.

If you are interested in this material, you are engaged in foundry production, or you want to open your own / modify an existing business, feel free to consider one of the Series X devices for purchase, depending on your tasks.

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