Design 3d printed eyewear with Tinkercad – Part 2

A few weeks ago I wrote about the 3D Printshow in London and how a seminar by Pekka from Tinkercad inspired me to start with 3D modeling. I decided to try to create my own eyewear and this is part two of my adventure.

Prototype

Based on his eyewear 3D model (which everyone can grab and modify in Tinkercad) and with the help of an optician who provided me with the right measurements I managed to create a prototype. The next step was to get the prototype printed.
From within Tinkercad you get to choose by which 3d printing service you’d like your model to be printed. You get to choose from Sculpteo, Shapeways, Ponoko or i.materialise. Of course it is also possible to download your model in for instance .STL and print it out yourself but I chose to give the honour to i.materialise.

Model

Very soon after I ordered my prototype a customer support engineer from i.materialise emailed me to clarify a few things. She told me that the model I ordered was a grouped model and not a connected assembly and that therefore they could not accept it for production. You can read everything about grouped models (and why they won’t print them as such) here.

So keep in mind that when you order this model, and you want it to be functional, than you have to place an order for three separate files (glasses + two handles). I decided that it wasn’t really necessary to have a functional prototype so mine was printed as one piece. That was a mistake and I’ll explain why later.

Optician

I Received my prototype exactly two weeks after I placed my order at i.materialise. I was pretty surprised because I initially thought it would going to take at least three weeks. I put it on and it fit perfectly.

A few days later I hopped on my bike to show it to my optician. He was pretty impressed with the result and gave me a few tips for improvement. As such, he suggested that I lengthen the handles a bit.

Material

So the prototype was printed in a material called Multicolor and because it was printed in one piece I should have chosen a material that was a bit more bendable. For me it was no problem because the prototype was made for my measurements, but when my colleague put them on it snapped like a twig.

Pekka already warned me in the comments:

”..Only thing I’m concerned is the Multicolor material in this case, because
It doesn’t bend. Design is made for Nylon as you mentioned, which is flexible material.
So be really, really careful when try them out!”

Final phase

The next thing I’m going to do is make some changes and then print it out in Nylon. I’ll keep you posted.