Anyone printed an exported STL file?

[DanB]

I did an STL related search, looking through the results and didn't find anything within a few minutes.

Has anyone processed a scene or object and taken it all the way to their 3D printer?

[Andrea Alessi]

Hi Dan,

yes absolutetly, 3DF Zephyr is widely used in 3D printing

Just note that if you are using 3DF Zephyr Free you can not export in STL directly, so you'll have to export your textured mesh and convert it to STL with a third party software (e.g. meshlab)

Lite, Pro and Aerial can directly export meshes in .STL format.

[DanB]

Hi, thanks Andrea. I was hoping to see some examples from others. I have exported a couple of files but they didn't look very good in the slicer (Simplify3D). I believe I used the OBJ file and imported into Fusion360, then exported the stl from there.

For any others that might be curious about exporting from the free version I captured the actual export screen shown here.

I keep leaning towards the Lite version. So much so that one of these days I'm going to fall over!

[Andrea Alessi]

Hey Dan,

we also have a small i3 Wanhao in the office. I made the Rosetta Mission Comet with Zephyr from roughly 1800 images

then added a small pedestal in blender and printed it

There are many examples out there, probably also on this forum. But if you have some questions feel free to ask!

I don't think you need to enhance the generated textured meshes for 3D printing, you should be set with the textured mesh (export -> export textured mesh)

One thing you should be careful is to make sure to export in local coordinates ( check "local rendering coordinates system" ) if your images are geotagged (e.g. if you used your phone to take images). Not all software support double precision (and i suspect none of the 3D printing software does).

[DanB]

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for the post and example. I have since installed the lite version and am now using more photos. I see that once created, the models are very small. As an example my old truck is normal size right but when I export to a stl file type it looks really bad. I suspected that scale was the issue so to test that I scaled the model or all objects then exported the mesh again and see that it is looking better but still needs work. Also I see when orbiting around I start to lose the envelope area of the model. So my questions are this:

At what point in processing do you check and scale your model for finer detail or resolution?

What variable do you change to get a larger viewing envelope or working window where the model doesn't start to disappear?

[Andrea Alessi]

hi Dan,

you can scale at any point. However, with free/lite (which lack control points) you should probably wait untile the mesh/textured mesh phase as this is the only way you can scale inside zephyr https://www.3dscanninghacks.com/wiki..._Free_And_Lite

What do you mean by "losing the envelope area of the model" ? Are you referring to the bounding box? If so, you should check it (and resize it) after the SfM phase

[DanB]

Thanks Andrea,

The truck is probably not the best test for 3D printing right off the bat but I feel pretty good about the overall quality of scene I am getting even with black color, glass, and chrome centers on the wheels. I can see that it has potential at least.

"losing the envelope area of the model" I figured it out. Once I scaled the scene up some I was getting outside of the viewport clipping values.