ZPrinter 650 - printed nothing

[Ayla]

Hello, our printer didn't print any model. The model was quite a lot edited in Geomagic Design and it seemed allright. Printer didn't warn us of anything. It printed as usually. But in vacuuming process there was nothing, only one small part of something (ca 5 mm). We didn't print models from Geomagic Design before, we are new in using it. What could be the problem? Is it related with Geomagic? Please, some advice how could we solve it?

[curious aardvark]

don't use geomagic design :-)

[awerby]

You're not giving us much to go on here. There could be a problem with your model, but there also could be something wrong with your printer. If it printed out much smaller than you were expecting, it might be a part designed in inches but printed in mm. It might be that there was a tiny hole in your model that caused the print to fail - you can't print infinitesimally thin surfaces without any volume. Geomagic Design (now called Alibre Design, since 3DSystems divested it) is certainly capable of producing printable models, but of course it's also capable of making unprintable ones. And there's nothing in that printer's software which will warn you about flaws in your models. Is the machine generally working okay, with other models?

[Ayla]

We have a Geomagic scanner so we wanted to give it a go. Thanks for your answer!

[Ayla]

Well, as you wrote the possibilities are more. I think the most likely scenario is a wrong model with some tiny hole(s). We were trying to avoid from thin surfaces and inches too but the printed „thing“ was probably a part of the model. Other models from different programmes printed well. We will print again on Monday so we will see. Thank you for your answer!

[awerby]

Is this model something that originated with a scan from a Geomagic Capture scanner? Did you use the Mesh Doctor in Geomagic Wrap to clean up the mesh before importing it into Design and trying to print it? That has a function which fills tiny holes; it also finds and fixes overlapping polygons, eliminates unconnected bits, remeshes, and generates a clean model.

Andrew Werby
computersculpture.com

[Ayla]

Yes, the model was from scanner and it didn’t scan very well so we had to edit a lot. We scanned through Geomagic Design and let it in. We didn't use Geomagic Wrap but we will certainly try it. In Design we applied some operations (fill holes, healing wizard, rewrap, global remesh, texture) and finally it printed a model. Unfortunately it was in white colour so the texture wasn‘t applied. Next few days we will work on it. Thank you for your interest and your advice!

[awerby]

Starting with a good scan would help a lot - you know the saying: "garbage in, garbage out". There are things you can do to improve results, like spraying models with flat white paint, if some areas are failing to show up in the scan. Registration errors can also make it difficult to get clean models; how are you aligning the various separate scans? Are you using a turntable?