Embedded Text Printing using Autodesk 123D and Ultimaker

I’ve already had one go at printing text using the Ultimaker, when I used Autodesk 123D to print out my name. Next I thought I’d try making text that “stuck into” the surface. My theory was that it might look better than stuff that stuck out. And it sort of does, see above.

The biggest problem was persuading Autodesk 123D to let me put the text into a surface. I’ve figured out a way to do it now (and the program itself is growing on me as I’ve also found out how to dimension things after I’ve created them). Anyhoo, if you ever want to embed text into a surface (and so I don’t forget for next time), here is the sequence:

1. Make a new surface that is going to hold the text.
2. Create a sketch on the surface that contains the text you want to embed.
3. Extrude the surface. For some reason the text part doesn’t extrude and so you get an embedded effect.

I’ve no idea if this is a bug or not meant to happen. It actually looks really good in the designer…

You can just export and print as usual. As you can see at the top, it doesn’t look too bad. Each character in the picture is about 1cm high. I’m going to experiment with larger text and different fonts.

More Twitter Printing Fun

South Holderness Technology College came to see us today. Emma organised everything excellently and I was first man in this morning, as I then had to zoom off to Doncaster for an Exam board. I was printing my tweets again, and everything worked splendidly. (This means that I am probably due a session where everything fails in the near future…)

They were a great audience, and I promised some references:

You can find out more about the Gadgeteer here: http://www.netmf.com/gadgeteer/

If you fancy buying some hardware you can get the kits from Cool Components.

If you want to make your own 3D printer like Una you can get a kit from Ultimaker.

Charlotte told me about a competitor to my Twitter printer (or perhaps my Twitter printer is a competitor for it). The LittlePrinter puts things onto paper, and will have a mobile client that you use to configure it. However, everything is pushed from a cloud based server which is supported by the hardware supplier. When they go bust you lose everything, and it is hard to see how they can make money once they have got the profit on the hardware. That has already happened to my Chumby and my Nabaztag rabbit. My plans for my Twitter printer include a web configuration page so that the user can always control the device directly, rather than any kind of on-going requirement for support.

Book News

Two bits of interesting book news today. O’Reilly are having a special offer on all kinds of great books for the next week, up to 5th July. One of them is my XNA book (the one on the left above). Follow this link to get your hands on this, and any other titles that take your fancy (but buy mine first…)

http://oreil.ly/LFXgno

Also, Start Here! Learn the Kinect API! is coming out soon, I think some folk have already managed to buy a copy. One clarification, just as we went to print Microsoft released version 1.5 of the Kinect SDK. The book doesn’t cover any of the new APIs provided in version 1.5, but all of the content will work fine.

Gadgets at St. Bede’s

This is the audience, thanks too much for to the volunteer who helped me build the camera.

Did a school visit today. For the last couple of years we’ve been doing talks at St. Bede’s about computing and good stuff, Today I was showing some of the fun and games that you can have with Gadgeteer and 3D printing.

This is the output from my “Tweet Printer”. It connects to the internet and prints out my tweets. And it works.

These are the working components, a FEZ Spider, WiFi board and custom printer connector, based on the only plug and socket that we had in stores, which is probably a bit big (and would sound really funny if you plugged headphones into it…

Another view, at the bottom you can see the hole for the GHI 7 led display which shows the progress as the device finds a WiFi network, connects to it, sends a web request and then decodes and prints the tweet.

It even works by using my Lumia 900 in Internet sharing mode, which means that I can see my tweets immortalised on paper everywhere I go. If I fancy doing something different, for example a printed weather forecast or shopping list, then I just have to change the software. All I need to do now is print a lid for the box. And find some smaller plugs, and make a new printer box with room for the power supply socket.

If you were at the talk and want the slide deck, you can find it here.

Lonely Windows Phones

I’ve got a couple of Windows Phones in my office that are a bit lonely. They are Nokia Lumia 710 models and rather nice. If you are a continuing Hull Student and have a Windows Phone project in mind, tell me your idea and if I like it I’ll get one posted out to you for you to play with. There are only two rules:

• You must blog the progress that you make over the summer.
• You must put something in the Windows Phone Marketplace before the end of summer.

I’ll send the phones out on Monday next week to the two best ideas.