Using a Relief + Boolean to cut out letters for 3d printing:Is there a better way?

Using a Relief + Boolean to cut out letters for 3d printing:Is there a better way?

Hello all,

I'm working on 2 different projects for 3d printing and I wanted to do a sanity check that there wasn't a better way to do it.

The first is a simple band with letters cut out. I'm using :
Boolean (intersection)

• Box
• Relief (with noise, turbulence, sea level turned off and a greyscale height map ).

The second is a coin where I'm using using :

Boolean (intersect)

• relief (inverted and mirrored height map)
• extrude (for coin)

(and nested in another boolean for the back face)

The two challenges I'm running into are that for good results, I need to have a large Sections Width (and height) on my relief maps, which slow things down a lot.

The second challenge is that the slicing program doesn't seem happy with the exported STL. (Makerware) Going over the model, I'm not seeing any missing poly's, but wanted to make sure there wasn't an additional step I could take to seal the mesh or check for holes or inverted normals. (doesn't sound like it from the forums, but the last discussion I found was from C3d 5x)

If anyone else wants to try this, I got much much better resultant meshes from the boolean operations by putting sizable black borders around the height map image. This allowed the relief object to then larger when mated with the other boolean'd object. (on C3d 6.1 at least)

i.e. (yes, it's ascii art time)

---------------------------- (relief map)

So, in a nutshell, am I going down a reasonable path for this?

as always, thanks all!

oldmicah said:

...
The second challenge is that the slicing program doesn't seem happy with the exported STL. (Makerware) Going over the model, I'm not seeing any missing poly's, ...

Click to expand...

Hi,

It's hard to tell without seeing the files ... Any link ?
First, see if this free software can help you

Thanks Francois!

I've downloaded the app and am looking at it now. I've got an ! mark with the mesh, so I'm guessing it found something. I'll play with it and see what I can find and then reply back.

many thanks!

As I´m still not sure what you´re after - maybe a plane+greyscale image+displacement-modifier will do it.

Cheers
Frank

Hello Frank,

Sorry I wasn't clear. I'm using a displacement graphic + a relief object to get a height map of the text. Then I'm doing a boolean operation (intersect) with a solid so it will be printable.

The trick is that the relief has to have a lot of sections to get decent resolution, which makes it slow on my machine to manipulate and may also be giving me a suspect mesh. (I'm trying netfabb to see if it can auto heal it)

I was trying to ask if there was a better way to accomplish this. (in the image below, the front face object is also a relief)

Coin is meant as a joke, and the latin translation is probably/definitely suspect.

many thanks,
Steven

I´m pretty sure a decent 16bit greyscale image will do it and no Booleans are needed. To get thickness add a shell modifier for instance. Flattening the bottom shouldn´t be a problem.

Cheers
Frank

Will that work with a different relief on both sides? i.e. it's a 2 sided coin with a front face and a back face.

many thanks!

I guess Yes when the outer rim has a similar topology. Use "Import children" to make them one mesh then flip the bottom part 180° and bridge them together.

Cheers
Frank

What about using booleans in a 2d program and then extruding?