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Among these variables for fused filament printing are infill, density, and scale–you do not want confusion between printing at millimeter or inches scale! At this stage, additional supports are usually added to prevent distortion during printing.
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Using an intermediary program, the STL file is reformatted into directions for how to move the robotic printer head. But which of the many methods of 3D printing should be used? As you will have gathered from the brief descriptions of the different techniques, they yielded drastically different outputs in different materials (and at drastically different costs).įor each technique there are many variables involved in how the 3D printer interprets the directions encoded in the original 3D file: without meticulous documentation on the original print settings, it is nearly impossible to replicate an “original” (an “artist print” or “designer print” ) at a later date. Of the 48 STL files included in the kit, we chose to print the “universal” adapter, which consists of an icosahedron with various toy pieces attached.
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While we did not originally acquire the files as part of the museum’s gift, we were able to source them from the designer (and they are available free of charge at: ). This could allow visitors to play with a kit in the galleries.Ĭondition assessment: Although the original prints are still in good condition (they are about 3 years old at this time), we wanted to look at the possibility of reprinting them at a later date to see what that would entail. In this case, we could use the 3D files (which were released publicly) to print new copies, as was intended by the designer. This technique was used to print the kit in the Cooper Hewitt collection.ģD-printed objects in museum collections could potentially allow for many different display options. SLA is a more expensive process than SLS, and yields an object with an inherently smoother finish.

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The STL file simply consists of a very long series of coordinates for these polygons. STL (short for Stereolithography) describes the three dimensional structure of an object by breaking down the surface into triangular polygons.

There are seemingly inumerable digital file formats for the purposes of 3D printing – DAE, X3D, X3DB, X3DV, and WRL, etc., the most common being OBJ and STL. 3D digital files can be produced in many different 3D modeling programs. When Cooper Hewitt acquired this set of Free Universal Construction Kit objects, we collected just that: the physical 3D-printed kit of pieces, and not the digital files required to print them. This case study examines 3D printing, with an emphasis on the significant properties of this manufacturing method, as illustrated by our efforts to print a new object from the set. The files are licensed under a Creative Commons License. Levin published the digital files for 3D printing the kit on the blog of the Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab in 2012. In theory, the kit breaks down the proprietary barriers that prevent children from using many different kinds of construction toys simultaneously for instance, allowing a Lego to be connected to a Tinkertoy, or a Duplo to a K’Nex. Golan Levin’s Free Universal Construction Kit is a 3D-printed set of objects that serve as adapters between ten different construction toy sets, and was featured in Cooper Hewitt’s 2014 exhibition Beautiful Users. The two-year project was coordinated by an in-house team of conservators, curators, and registrar, and was conducted by digital conservation specialist Ben Fino-Radin and his team at Small Data Industries. This week’s posts feature case studies from Cooper Hewitt’s Digital Collections Management Project, a conservation survey of born-digital and hybrid objects in the permanent collection.
