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Hi All.

This is an attempt at 3D Printing a Mandelbulb on a ZCorp 450 printer.  As you would expect with these devices, some of the finer detail is lost in the printing process, and some detail is lost to clumsy fingers while the model is being glued up to strengthen it.

I'd like to say a big ThankYou to Daniel White for supplying the voxel data set, and assisting with the software testing and debugging process.  Also Thanks to the School of Computing at Teesside University for purchasing one of these printers.

This model is 7cm tall, and there is currently a 10cm version going through the printer right now - I'll post photos if it looks worthwhile.

http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSCF0666.JPG
http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSCF0667.JPG
http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSCF0668.JPG

Gary.

Cool ! looks like it's made of salt!

looks nice :D
How much dp - uh - mm³? does it have? :)
dpmm³ xD

I wonder what could be possible with some nice colours :)

Cool!

Me want!  O0

J

Hi Kram1032...

The photos show a model that's 7cm wide (not 7cm high as I might have said earlier)...

7cm wide model uses 36cm³ powder.
8cm... 53cm³ powder
10cm... 103cm³
12cm... 179cm³
14cm... 279cm³

>> looks like it's made of salt!

It's a plaster based powder which is coated with superglue for strength after its removed from the printer.

>> Me want!

I would need to speak to the boss to see if anything can be arranged.

Gary.

Me too!  I've written the code to take the colour from the voxel set, but I think a bug has crept into the program. I guess I need to backtrack a bit...

Gary.

Fantastic! I want this!

I never thought that it is possible to touch Mandelbulb!

I didn't ask for the volume but for the 3D-equivalent of DPI ;)

Which resolution is possible with this size? :)

Fantastic and yes I want one too.

As far as I know, you're the first one to create a printed Mandelbulb. And hey it comes with realtime GI for free! ;)

Sorry, I misunderstood.  The printer claims it can do 0.1mm thick layers.  The maximum size is just over a 20cm cube, but something that size would cost £1000's just for the material.

Insane!!!! :o

This is completely  awesome! I would love to buy one of these. Could these be sprayed another colour?

awesome, how much for that printer :D ?

With such steep material costs, wouldn't it be better to hollow out the inside with a honeycomb pattern, and print the bulb as two halves that you glue together after emptying surplus "resin" ?

I believe it was in the region of £25000 (UK) but I wasn't directly involved with the purchase so I didn't see the quotes or invoices.

>> [miner49er]  Could these be sprayed another colour?

Some of our students have used enamal paints on their models (like those used for plastic model kits http://www.airfix.com/humbrol-paints-and-accessories/ ).  I'm not sure the Mandelbulb surface would be ideal for spraying, but you could certainly use a brush - and a lot of patience :-)

>> [Snakehand] With such steep material costs, wouldn't it be better to hollow out the inside

That's kind-of what I did.  I wrote the conversion software to create a hollow object with walls and a hole for the unused material to escape.  Internally, the volume looks like lots of disorganised steps.  In fact, this was the main challenge... to create an object with walls thick enough to physically handle, while maximising the hollow to keep costs down and at the same time, trying to minimise the polygon count so the whole thing could fit in the computer's memory for printing purposes.

What you don't see in the photo is that I got the balancing act slightly wrong on the first print because the top popped off the mandelbulb when I removed it from the printer.  http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSCF0653.JPG

Gary.

Hi All.

Just wanted to add a photo of the 10cm model which came out of the printer today.  Nothing really new here, but a little bit more detail is visible on the larger model.

http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSC08666.JPG
http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSC08668.JPG

BTW: I think I've located the colour problem with my program, and I'm hoping to get something out by the end of the week.

Gary.

http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSC08666.JPG

I like the ambient occlusion, it looks very realistic, have you used an orbit trap ?  :tongue1:

while that's really cool, please don't link 3.2mb images :(

irfanview is a great free program for high quality image resizing -> http://www.irfanview.com/

oops !  I'll resize them when I get back to my desk in the morning.

nice :D

Lol... lyc I thought you love high resolutions?  :P

I actually prefer higer res pics but ok, most likely that's a matter of internet connections...

I also like the outstanding render quality but what's those salt-noise-ish pixels in the first image?  ;D

Very nice. So, when are you going to market these things?
I would like one made of meta. Shiny :-)

Yup, I do like the higher resolutions, but it seems the moderators dont :-(

I'm not sure which bit of noise you mean...  If you mean the white spots on the grey model, then these are areas untouched by the superglue.  The model comes out of the printer white, and very weak.  The model is coated with superglue for sterngth, but that makes the model go a bit grey.

If you mean the grey speckled effect, then that's the rough surface finish of the material, possiblly with excess lose poweder still on the surface.  The 3d printers are normally used for engineering models, and you would normally use sandpaper to get a finer finish. 

Hmmm, I would love to get a few printed off for sale.  Our staff and students can pay for models to be made so the department can cover the cost of materials.  However, it's a bit more tricky for people not directly involved with the University.  I'm not sure what the answer is.

Sadly though, the machine doesn't do shiny :-( 

Maybe silver or gold paint would work, or a gloss varnish.

most likely it was the thrid kind of "noise" ;)

What's about a glass-lasered model (lol that definitely isn't the propper name)?
That should look nice and maybe allow for higher accuracy.... I guess :)

Well, let us know if you can print us one out for sale.
How fragile are these things?

Yes, that would be very nice - I wouldn't have to worry about fragile bits and superglue.  I've had so much powder superglued to my fingers that I can barely see me hands these days !

Seriously though, just before Christmas I noticed a stall in our local shopping centre with a laser scanner to digitise objects (and presumably people's faces) to make these glass lasered objects, so it must be do-able.

>> [miner49er] How fragile are these things?

Immediately after printing, they're very fragile.  For example, the small nodules on the mandelbulb will break off with the touch of a finger.  We use superglue to strengthen the models.  They become about as strong as a glass ornament.  They can be handled without a problem, but squeeze too hard or drop them and they're gone.

Slightly off topic, but we had a Norwegian student who printed one of his Animation/Game characters out and posted it home to his family.  However, Norwegian customs opened the parcel and didn't understand what the model was made of, so to try and understand it they cut it in bits to analyse it.  End of model.

Finally got the colour problem sorted :-)

http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSCF0672.JPG
http://vr3.tees.ac.uk/gary/mandelbulb/DSCF0674.JPG

Coool! I want the same :):)

Great, nice colours :D

Awesome - the higher object size and colours turned out well! Look forward to the 500 megapixel uploads! (just kidding... ;) ) .

The colour looks good, but it consumed a complete ink cartridge  :o

Oh that's obviously down to the infinite surface area... ;)

lol

:-)

Do you know shapeways (http://www.shapeways.com/) ?

Free shipping, a range of materials (including metal and coloured printing) and they only charge by solid volume.

If you could hollow this thing out, it could work out pretty cheap

Perhaps this could be a new alternative to the upper/lower box-counting dimensions, or the Hausdorff dimension... the Ink Cartridge dimension! Since clearly each ink cartridge has infinite volume (right, that's why I'm always running out...) we can define the dimension by the number of ink cartridges used!

No, but seriously, that would be an interesting (if highly impractical) way of measuring dimension; print the object at different scales, measure with which exponent the ink usage grows.  ;)

Thanks for the link Daniel, I was aware of the company but I didn't realise they accepted uploads for production of models.

The machine they show in the video can handle only one colour of material for any print run, so they wouldn't be able to produce a full colour mandelbulb like we can with the ZCorp printer.  It looks like they have some work to do, to remove support material and to strengthen the pastic after printing so there will be an amount of labour cost in there (labour costs often outstrip the raw material costs).

Having said that, I suspect they have stronger parts coming out of the machine than we do, due to the different materials and process used.

The model I produce from the voxel data is hollowed out, so it would be suitable.  I'll see if they'll give me a quote.

Gary.

Hmmm, I have another way of measuring dimension... the ink useage is proportional to the time it takes for the boss to come knocking on my door to complain about costs !

Hey could you upload those photos to a photosite like Flickr or if not, mind if i put em up ?

I don't mind if you want to upload the photos to another site.