Greetings! We have exciting news to share for those of you who want to hack, mod, or design accessories for the Steam Controller and Puck.
Today we're making the CAD files for the external shell (surface topology) of Steam Controller and Puck available for download under a Creative Commons license. This includes an STP model of each, an STL model of each, and an engineering drawing with critical features/keep outs for each. You can find the files here. We can't wait to see what you all...
If you ever want to try again, you could try with photogrammetry.
If you’ve never heard of it, it uses multiple pictures of the same subject to produce a 3D model automatically. Here’s a link to a video showing off Meshroom. The link jumps a few minutes into the video to show off the point cloud generated from the images.
I can’t speak for the quality of the video overall, but I do like this guy’s channel. I have used Meshroom myself to genetate models. Note: it requires an Nvidia GPU. Although, I hear there’s an AMD compatible fork called MeshroomCL.
One thing you need to worry about when doing photogrammetry is having a precise scale reference on the object. The software has no idea if you’re taking pictures of a tiny elephant or a real elephant. So you need this scale reference on the object so you can precisely scale the object up or down later to have the real size. It can either be some feature on the object itself that you can measure very precisely, or you can tape a little printed ruler on the object (if there’s a flat surface), or even just two marks that are a known distance apart. Basically put two tiny pen marks on the objects and then measure the straight line distance between them using digital calipers. The further apart they are, the better.
And then you can use normal 3D modeling software to use this generated object to make Boolean subtractions from some shape you made. This lets you 3D print an object that perfectly mates to the thing you scanned. However, the scanned object is often just an empty shell and you will have to give it some volume before you can use it for Boolean operations. I think I used Mesh Mixer for that.
In your example, you would have a model of the respirator, and you could use that to subtract from some eyeglass holder that you design, and then it would mate perfectly to your respirator. You could use glue or epoxy to attach the printed object to the respirator.
It’s not sufficient for precise models. But, I did once use it to reconstruct a broken sculpture and 3D print the sculpture after I fixed it in Meshmixer.
If you ever want to try again, you could try with photogrammetry.
If you’ve never heard of it, it uses multiple pictures of the same subject to produce a 3D model automatically. Here’s a link to a video showing off Meshroom. The link jumps a few minutes into the video to show off the point cloud generated from the images.
https://youtu.be/yKbyVDK2Ep8?t=520
I can’t speak for the quality of the video overall, but I do like this guy’s channel. I have used Meshroom myself to genetate models. Note: it requires an Nvidia GPU. Although, I hear there’s an AMD compatible fork called MeshroomCL.
One thing you need to worry about when doing photogrammetry is having a precise scale reference on the object. The software has no idea if you’re taking pictures of a tiny elephant or a real elephant. So you need this scale reference on the object so you can precisely scale the object up or down later to have the real size. It can either be some feature on the object itself that you can measure very precisely, or you can tape a little printed ruler on the object (if there’s a flat surface), or even just two marks that are a known distance apart. Basically put two tiny pen marks on the objects and then measure the straight line distance between them using digital calipers. The further apart they are, the better.
And then you can use normal 3D modeling software to use this generated object to make Boolean subtractions from some shape you made. This lets you 3D print an object that perfectly mates to the thing you scanned. However, the scanned object is often just an empty shell and you will have to give it some volume before you can use it for Boolean operations. I think I used Mesh Mixer for that.
In your example, you would have a model of the respirator, and you could use that to subtract from some eyeglass holder that you design, and then it would mate perfectly to your respirator. You could use glue or epoxy to attach the printed object to the respirator.
It’s not sufficient for precise models. But, I did once use it to reconstruct a broken sculpture and 3D print the sculpture after I fixed it in Meshmixer.