Silly little reverse engineering project

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

I got a bambu printer recently and have been using it with Rhino to fix all the stuff I complain about in my daily life around the house.

One specific problem that has bugged me for awhile, my van does not have a center console and keeping my wallet in my pocket puts my leg to sleep on road trips. Curious to see the state of scanning and reverse engineering tools that are free, or close to it- I downloaded Kiri engine (scanning app) to my older iphone, scanned the trim part on the side of my seat, then built a small pocket I could attach to have a place to store my wallet and phone while driving.

The result? pleasantly surprising.

here is a shot of the scan- (the focus was the trim part on the seat side)

shaded view

while not an amazing scan, it was plenty good enough for me to be able to create some surfaces that represented the back of the part I was planning on building-

I simply projected curves to the mesh, split them where the fillets were, rebuilt the segments and created primary surfaces that were extended to be overbuilt.

I trimmed them back and played with surface fillets until I was happy it was close enough.

I then built some simple pockets that fit like I wanted them to,

then added a displacement texture as per Brian James video here-

getting the displacement to be strong enough to show up properly will take some revisions and I used some AI tools to make the texture sample seamless …that worked ok, but not awesome.

getting a high quality seamless texture, and making the displacement a bit stronger would yield better results, also printing on a high def sla, would have worked better than my bambu with default settings, etc… I got SOME texture, and it looks better than just shiny build lines, but that part could be improved and will get better as I learn more about how my printer can handle these type of files. The balance between making a bajillion triangle mesh, and the displacement quality is something that could be better here, and will take some more experimenting.

The end result was printed in petg and bonded to the trim panel with JB weld plastic bond.

I learned a lot, had some fun. and my leg no longer goes dead when I drive.

The goal was to see how far the tools have come for this type of stuff have come, and I can report happily that they have come a very long way indeed.

happy modeling!
-K

[sach]

Nice project @theoutside !

Which Bambu printer are you using?

[clement]

@theoutside, impressive ! How good is the quality of the scan ?

thanks,
c.

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

x1 carbon

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

it’s just OK…for a free iphone scan, but … and this is key, it got me what I needed and that is notable.

for any “real” reverse engineering I’d want a better scan, but the part actually fits really well and in the end the process is less important than the result.

I have done a ton of high end reverse engineering using very expensive hardware and software, and honestly, for simple stuff and concept work, this is a totally legit set of tools.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Nice project and lots of fun, indeed.

The Bamboo studio actually has a setting to add randomly distorted outer wall to mimic a rough matte finish. However, it’s nowhere close to the fake leather effect used in many industries.

[clement]

@theoutside thank you for the info. I’m always looking for free scan apps i can try and recommend for any platform. X1 carbon is used here too by some of my students and i’ve been impressed with the print quality for that price.
_
c.

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

oh cool! i’ll do some digging into that! I have yet to get too deep into the settings yet… it seems it has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. My current favorite is adding a pause to insert a captive nut for threaded inserts printed in place.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

@theoutside

captive nut

My favourite feature in the BambuLab slicer is the ability to “paint” a custom layer height, which is a nice way to further improve the the automatic layer thickness. Here is an overview of the feature:

Fix the Top Layers of Spheres in Bambu Studios

[Gijs (Gijs de Zwart)]

I’ve used Scaniverse before with the iPhone to make usable car parts as well. As for the threaded inserts, instead of pausing the print you can also consider using inserts that you heat up and push in place.

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

small update, I got a much better result on the texture.

I took my photo of the actual interior trim texture into adobe sampler and was able to color correct it, make a really nice tiled texture and then apply and adjust it in rhino.

sampler has some really great features for making tiled materials.

and the resulting printed part. (default settings in bambu studio)

overall stoked with the result from stuff that is readily available accessible to all.