A close friend works at a nearby bee farm, assembling and packing various products to ship out. This manufacturing involves a lot of dust floating around the production floor, and he asked if I could print something that would snap over his soda can to keep the stray particles out. I figured this was a perfect opportunity to practice some 3d CAD and get the printer going. I intended the first version to simply rotate around the top of the can, protecting the hole from dust.

For a project in my computational physics class, I wanted to create something more than a program. With an old webcam, a pantry turntable, and a cheap laser, I figured I could use MATLAB’s image processing abilities to create proof-of-concept 3d scanner. By centering the object on the turntable, and projecting the laser line onto the object, I can use the camera to collect images while rotating the object at known intervals.

Here is my newly assembled Printrbot Simple Metal. I ordered the printer as a kit, and assembled it this past weekend. So far, it has proven to be a robust machine. Here is a time lapse of the build: