Design 3d printed eyewear

A few weeks ago I wrote about the 3D Printshow in London and how a seminar by Pekka from Tinkercadinspired 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.

Credits: All content taken from www.3dprinting.com