Tutorials

How to 3D Print Textured Objects Inside Clear Plastic Blocks

58 9 Expert
This walkthrough explains how to print fully textured CAD files encased inside transparent blocks, to help support complex parts, show vistas you never thought possible, or just increase the usability of your full-color models!

How to 3D Print in Full Color (Part 1)

32 7 Beginner
This is a series of tutorials to help printer operators who are NOT graphic artists get the absolute most out of their multi-color, multi-material 3D printers, like the Stratasys J750. We will cover what types of files multi-color printers can accept and how to manipulate colors in Photoshop, Rhino, etc, to get the full gradient texture effects that most color printer users want.

Printing Full-Color FEA Results on 3D Printers

46 7 Beginner
Ever wanted to see, feel, and handle your FEA results in the best way to share them with colleagues and students? This tutorial goes through the steps how to use SOLIDWORKS Simulation and GrabCAD Print to print full-color FEA results on polyjet color printers such as the J750. It's a lot easier than you think!

How to Color Proof Your 3D Prints (Using This Super-Secret Stratasys Website)

33 6 Beginner
If a customer has ever come to you and said, "I need the color of this 3D print to match this RGB or Pantone EXACTLY!" and you've wondered how to do that – this is the tutorial for you! We'll talk about soft proofing (how to make sure your printer can even print a given color) and hard proofing (matching what you see on screen with a physical result) using Photoshop and the most advanced color printer on the market, a Stratasys J750! (You can find a video version of this tutorial here: https://youtu.be/XsollrDbUVc)

What 3D printing a coronavirus taught me about DFAM and rapid prototyping

20 6 Beginner
A project to visualize the novel coronavirus for a local medical conference. But over the course of our work, we re-learned some important 3D printing principles that EVERYONE can use!

How to go from GPS Data to Full Colour 3D Model

26 5 Expert
Got a large dataset you want to visualize in 3D? Let's take a look at the steps involved from going from just a spreadsheet to full colour 3D.

How to Create Incredibly Complex Textured Shapes for 3D Printing, Using Bump Mapping

37 5 Expert
This tutorial covers how to use 2D images to create actual 3D depth and physical textures on your CAD parts and then 3D print them. Mainly we use Rhino to do the displacement-mapping, but Photoshop could be used as well. Files were then printed in full color on a Stratasys J750.

How to 3D Print in Full Color (Part 3): Clear + Texture Together

24 5 Expert
This is the third in a series of tutorials to help printer operators who are NOT graphic artists get the absolute most out of their multi-color, multi-material 3D printers, like the Stratasys J750. We will cover how to create models with semi-transparent textures wrapped around curved, transparent bodies (taking advantage of a new slicer from Stratasys), and how to fix UV-mapping problems when wrapping 2D textures around 3D bodies goes wrong.

Vivid Materials Part 2- How should I use them?

2 5 Beginner
Our previous vivid tutorial discussed the expanded capabilities and applications of the new vivid materials. Among the things we mentioned were expanded color selection, increased control over color selection, increased automation in color proofing, brighter whites, smoother color gradients, and of course, transparency and vividness. We explained how this enables applications like rapid prototyping for transparent parts, Perspex® imitations, and transparent vividness for parts like toys and light covers. This tutorial covers the technical specs and explains how to use them to print opaque and transparent parts.

How to 3D Print in Full Color (Part 2): Repairing and Checking VRMLs

27 4 Intermediate
This is the second in a series of tutorials to help printer operators who are NOT graphic artists get the absolute most out of their multi-color, multi-material 3D printers, like the Stratasys J750. We will cover how to look deeper inside our VRML files to predict if they will import correctly and how to choose the resolution of VRML files from Rhino and other artistic CAD programs to make sure they are capturing the information you want.

Part 5: Hard Proofing

8 4 Beginner
Before embarking on large and color-critical prints, it is recommended to carry out proofing. Nothing beats the certainty of holding a sample part in your hand compared to relying on a screen visualization. The process of validating critical colors is called hard proofing and here is how it is done.

How to 3D Print More Realistic Consumer Product Prototypes

23 3 Intermediate
We discuss the 4 levels of 3D printed prototype realism all Industrial Designers should know about, and show you step-by-step how to reach each one!

How to 3D Print Complex, Semi-Random Lattice Structures, Easily

13 3 Expert
We show how to use Grasshopper and Rhino to automatically generate complex Voronoi structures ready for 3D printing.

How to 3D Print in Color- from SOLIDWORKS

5 2 Beginner
This tutorial shows an 'easier' workflow for applying full-color textures to CAD parts for 3D printing, if you are using SOLIDWORKS. It applies for anyone who has SOLIDWORKS Professional or Premium (2017+) since we'll be using the new SOLIDWORKS Visualize tool to map the textures.

How to control the transparency of your 3D printed parts- the hardest task yet!

4 1 Expert
With multi-material 3D printers, how do you control what's transparent and what's not? Especially when you've got clear sections above, behind, and even intermixed with your color layers? This tutorial covers controlling what's clear, what's opaque, and what's tinted, even in intersecting volumes printed as one solid part! Get ready to conquer the hardest task in 3D printing!