Introduction: DIY 3D Printed Painting

About: Hello, my name is Tomás, I like to make RC airplanes, model rockets, and other stuff that flies.

I always wanted to have beautiful paintings in my house, the only problem is that sometimes I can't find something I like. If the same thing happens to you as me, you will love this Instructable!! Today I will teach you how to make a personalized painting with the image you want, so what are we waiting for? Let's start!!!.

Supplies

  • Access to a 3D printer
  • 3d printing filament
  • Canvas "optional" (we will choose the size later)
  • Superglue
  • Ruler
  • Cardboard or paper (not very wide)

Step 1: Choose a Image

First, we have to choose an image to make our painting, for that, I recommend that you look for an image that matches your house or where you are going to put it or else it will look strange or ugly. I also recommend first starting with an image that is not so complicated or else it will cost you a lot.

Step 2: Vectorize Image

So after you decide on the image you want to use. We have to vectorize it, and to do that we can use Inkscape (If you do not know how to vectorize an image in Inkscape Click Here for a simple tutorial) This app will facilitate the entire image vectorization process, If you have any trouble with this app program you can use whatever program you want you would have the same results.

Step 3: Choosing the Size

It is important to choose the size before importing into Fusion360 so that you can then choose the size of the canvas, in my case, I am using an A5 sheet size box, but you can use any size you want if you don't know what are the different size of all the papers Click Here (not my image) to see what are all the different size of papers.

Step 4: Get the Image Into Fusion360

For this step, you have to "Save as" the result of the vectorization and open Fusion 360 then create a "Sketch" and in the "Insert" button press "Insert SVG" After that click on the result of the vectorization (Maybe you have I have to add some lines so that it can be extruded later), after you have the image delete the frame that we make before.

Step 5: Make It 3D

Now after having all the "Scketch" it is time to make it 3d, that we are going to finish the "Scketch", now we are going to choose all the layers that we want to extrude for our photo, for example, I use as a reference I use the photo version black and white of the photo to know which parts need to be extruded, remember that what we extrude is going to be black and what is not going to be white, I recommend you to extrude 1 to 2 mm so you don't use lots of filament and you can do more paintings later.

Step 6: Slice It and 3D Print It

So right now we have to prepare the file for printing and print it. I use Cura to prepare the files but you can use any program you are familiar with. If your "painting" is very large, I recommend breaking it into smaller pieces. In my case, since the painting is A5 size, I had no problem with that.


To print, as the height I chose was 2mm, it weighs 18 grams and took 2 hours to print, although it is a small painting, the weight seems fine to me. After you finish printing, peel it off, and that's it you have the parts for your painting.

Step 7: Put the Pieces in the Paper

So now that we have all the parts for our painting, we have to put that image inside the canvas, how? First, we have to align all the pieces as seen in Fusion360, for that we can use the inspection tool to see the distance between piece and piece, and then with a ruler, we locate it and glue the pieces on the piece of cardboard.

Step 8: Paste the Pieces in the Canvas

Now, using any glue that we have available, we are pasting the pieces into their location, this step is very important because if we fail it will look ugly, I recommend that you turn the piece, put a little glue and that's it, if you are patient it will look good, but if you do it too quickly there is a high possibility that it will not look so good. In my case I'm using just a piece of paper, but if you want you can use a canvas or anything else.


That's it, I hope you like it and see you in the next one, bye!!


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