how to 3d print?

[lasernewb]

Hi everyone, my username says it all... I'm a newb at this. I'm an architecture student and have building renderings from rhino, is there anyway I could 3d print a rendering onto an mdf board? What if I want to 3d print a picture of a person I have? The machine is a laserpro explorer by the way.

Thanks

[keebler303]

3d printing and laser cutting/engraving are two different things. 3d printing is generally squeezing out a thin filament of molten plastic in the shape you desire. It starts with nothing and builds onto that to make your piece. A laser cutter is only removing material. If you want a 3d rendering, you can either cut "slices" like layers and glue them together, or you can cut out "walls" and glue them together to form your structure. You would engrave a picture. It can be done but you cannot expect it to look good without the right picture and the right alterations to the picture using photoshop or photograv or some software like that. Maybe you should do a little googling and spend some time on youtube. There are lots of good example videos of both technologies there.

Matt

[lasernewb]

sorry I meant to say 3d engraving (correct me if I'm wrong). I'd just like to lightly engrave a pivture I have on an MDF panel

[Rodney Gold]

The explorer has a 3d engraving function , it uses 256 shades of grey to assign different power settings to each shade. You have to render the image as a rasster file (jpeg) in 256 shades of grey with white being not engraved and black being the areas that will engrave deepest.
You then use the 3d function and set your power and speed to suit. Its not precise and is quasi 3d , sort of 2 1/2d'ish at best. Various materials give different results , a Light Density Fibreboard will give deeper results than MDF. You often need to give a polishing pass after 3d engraving to try minimise scorching and remove laser "hatch marks" , you do this by running a black mask over the whole image at high speed and low power .
Try it...

[keebler303]

I am not familiar with your particular machine, I run a Kern machine. As I said, the right picture makes a world of difference. You have to have the right shades of gray in the right places or it looks terrible. If you use photograv, you can get a "2D" engraving of a picture which will turn out pretty well. I have experimented some and have never gotten a picture to look even half decent when trying to make it have depth. You lose the definition and it all turns into a dark blob. Making shapes and patterns and whatnot 3d is no sweat, but getting the detail of a picture into 3d is no small task.

As said above, TRY IT! Thats how you'll learn.

Good luck
Matt