Looking Through 3D printed binoculars

A post by Emilie Walsh


Hello Everyone! I’m Emilie, your new Research Community Coordinator for CAD and 3D printing at Research Bazaar.

I am a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, and my journey to 3D printing started out by genuine curiosity: I was first intrigued by the MakerBot 3D printer we have on Campus at the VCA, and wondered how it could be of some use for me.

While most artists have an interest in 3D printing for its amazing sculptural potential, I was first driven to use it in a more functional way.

My practice is image based, and I work in video, photos, drawing and printmaking, rather than with sculpture or spatial practice. However, I am always looking into new ways of displaying and showing images, and I have a strong interest in viewing devices such as vintage View Masters.

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A vintage View Master

I love the intimate relationship those devices create between the image and the viewer. To look through an object and discover a hidden image only you can see, reminds me of strong childhood memories like looking through a kaleidoscope, binoculars or other camera toys!

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Originally posted by rhetthammersmithhorror

I wanted to be able to display my work through a viewing device, and this is when I started investigating 3D printing, as a way to get what was in my mind into reality.

I first came into contact with Research Platforms via a research tool speed dating event run at the VCA. I was introduced to Vincent Khau, and he was responsible for most of my training!

I attended a few workshops for CAD software (TinkerCAD, Autodesk Fusion 360, Autodesk Inventor) with Research Platform to learn how to design my viewing device. I wanted to design something that looked like a pair of binoculars, but with the ability to insert photo slides into it.

I was quickly amazed by all the possibilities, as well as how easy it was, even if I had no engineering or industrial design background! TinkerCAD is the easiest thing and it is so playful! I believe it is the best software to be introduced to CAD 3D modelling: in addition to how easy it is to use, it’s free and you don’t even need to download it to your computer as it is a web-based application.

I was able to design my first 3D model to print, achieving in plastic what I had pictured in my imagination! How magic!

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 3D printed binoculars before being painted and assembled.

The nature of the plastic, almost toy-like in quality, really did suit what I was using it for. My slide-viewer binoculars have a fun and easy-to-handle nature, which allows visitors in the gallery to feel confident using them. I’ve sanded it to get a smoother finish, covered with multiple layer of spray putty (a filler to reduce the facets), and multiple layer of glossy red paint to make it attractive and fun to play with!

In the future, I would like to keep working with 3D modelling to create some more complex viewing devices, maybe an articulated one for the viewer to activate it and really interact with the images. While usually working with a 2D medium, 3D printing has literally given a new dimension to my art work, opening new perspectives on the way we look at images.

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If you feel like 3D modelling and 3D printing is something you would like to learn about, I’m going to be running workshop with Research Bazaar. Be touch with me or one of my amazing colleges of the CADventurer team at Research Bazaar.

find me on twitter: @emilouwalsh

emilouwalsh@gmail.com

1 Notes/ Hide

  1. resbaz posted this