Post #643228 by Whystler on Sun, Jul 8, 2012 1:52 PM

Hey hey :) Thanks for the questions!

I am a 3d artist fulltime for a living. I create objects in a 3d program (the program I use is called 3D Studio Max, but there are many programs out there for sculpting digitally in 3D). When I design on the computer, there are a lot of different tools that can be used. Many of them are like traditional carving tools that deposit volume onto a form .. or carve it away. Other tools allow you to build up with different 3d shapes to work up an object. And there are still many more shapes. You can think about it like using photoshop or another image program, but in 3D.

I most often create art for games and virtual worlds, but I also design in such a way that my work can be built by a special machine that creates a real life 3d object from a digital file: a 3D Printer.

3D printers generally work by slicing your digital file up into a number of horizantal crossections. Each crossection is printed as a layer by the printer. ... layer upon layer, until the object is finished. There are different kinds of printers that use powder or plastic in different ways to create layers.

My printer is fed a plastic filament (sometimes ABS, and sometimes I can use PLA which us a plastic made from corn) and the filament is extruded into a very fine thread (like a glue gun, but in this case it's between .2 and .4 mm thick) that is drawn onto a plate. The plate is lowered after the crossection is drawn, and then the next layer is drawn on top of the previous. On it goes - so on and so on, until an object is built.

And when it is finished, I remove it from the plate, carve off any support material and then go on to a number of other tasks like polishing or painting.

Here is a link to a printer like mine, printing an object:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoVUuJVgoYY

Hope this helps you understand! :)

-Whystler