3D meet up at the VCA

by Emilie Walsh


For my last day working for Research Platform Services, I wanted to organise a meet up at the VCA where I did my PhD. The campus is on Southbank, and sometimes researchers there find themselves a bit far away from the services that are offered at Parkville, so we make sure we offer some of our training in the other university campuses.

At the digital lab at the VCA

3D modelling, 3D scanning and 3D printing can be an amazing tool and resources for researchers at the VCA, in Fine Arts, Music, Theater or Dance Studies. Of course we invited researcher from all discipline too, as we believe in the emulation it creates and we always get excited about researchers collaborating across disciplines!

Our meet ups at Research Platforms are not your usual tech training: it’s more about sharing research projects and talk about the digital skills we use as researchers

First we talked about the benefit of 3D scanning to share and collaborate. If you are working with fragile artefact, you may not be able to access it, manipulate it, or share it with other researchers. Having a digital 3D model is a great archive and tool to share your research.


You can also 3D print a replica for teaching or communication purposes.

A 3D printed replica of a skull

If you are interested in working with object based data sets, and use 3D modelling and 3D printing, you can read more about it here

Then we welcomed Tall Ben, from the digitisation services of the university.

He presented the 3D scanning technology available for researchers. If you need a 3D model of a tiny insect or of a large architecture building, Ben is the guy for you!

Next, Mitchell Harrop, from the digital lab in Arts West in Parkville presented some projects the Digital Studio in is supporting. 3D modelling can also allow you to archive architectural artefacts, geo-localise them, and embed photos and other documentations to display online and communicate research better.

More about Mitchell’s project :

https://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/mharrop/mhw/v2/

Eric Jong, Master student and the VCA and ResCom at ResPlat, shared his latest 3D printed experiment.

Screenshot of Eric’s early experiment with a 3D model of a soundwave, in Fusion 360

3D printing is a cheap and fast technology, that allow makers to prototype, fail fast and made adjustment much quicker than with traditional technologies.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl4tpeOFyau/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

To end the meetup, we did a quick fun demo: How to do a 3D scan with your phone!

We 3D scan a cheese board in a few minutes for some amazing result


There are of course a range of options if you need a 3D scan for your research: the digitisation services at Uni would be the highest quality, but will require a lot of time, collaboration, will generate a lot of data, and potentially have a cost. A 3D scan with your phone would be the quickest options, with a lower quality in a DIY spirit!

If you are interest in 3D scanning some of your object based data set, be in touch with us at Research Platform and we can point you to the right option for you!

The whole team of researchers at the digital lab, VCA

Meetups are a great way to meet other researchers using similar tools than you, and work on solving some of your problems together. We alternate between meetups and trainings. If you are interested in joining a training check our calendar or be in touch with Eric for CAD and 3D printing.