How to Teleport! Free 3D Scanning and Cheap 3D Printing!

Teleportation is awesome. Transporting material instantly from once location to another will change the world. Local bands will have global tours, truck drivers will not have jobs, food wont spoil on shelves while others go hungry, and fewer people will listen to podcasts on their way into work. Many cultures have their own stories of lightning speed travel, teleportation and apparition. Muslims have the concept of Tay Al Ard, which comes from the words for folding of the earth, to excite them. eeks have !tar Trek"s Transporter to inspire and scientsits have been working on teleporting information. There have even been patents granted to teleportation technologies. #hich if you"re up for the chalenge, $ dare you to try to build this %! patent. #e will be talking about a different kind of teleportation. &ne that is accessible to the average person today 'given they have a spare (),*++ or so, and seems poised to change the way we look at physical products. The general idea is to scan an object, turn it into a digital file and send it over the internet to be reproduced elsewhere. This is not as fast as folding the earth, but it"s still a speedy way to deliver and iterate.

Step 1Materials

Materials you"ll need. ). A windows machine 2. To download and install )-./ catch 3. To download and install Meshmixer 4. To download and install either 0hinoceros, 1lender, or )-./. 5. A ./ printer. Two 2low cost2 options are3 Makerbot or the %4. $f you"re up for a kit and are excited by open source businesses go for the Makerbot5 $f you just want to buy something and get printing go for the %4. 6. The software necessary for the variety of ./ printer you purchased. 0eplicator , 4leasant./are helpful. 6. A camera. Any /!L0 would be great, but even point and shoots will work.

Step 2Take photographs of the ob ect to teleport

The process you"ll use to gather the physical dimensions of your object is called photogrammetry and in order to pick up on its shape you"ll need to take many photographs from many angles. 7ere are some tips3 %se strong indirect light Take your photographs se8uentially and in a circle around your object. 9ot up and down. %se low $!& for the low grain Take photos with a larger field of view. Megapixel maximum resolution will be used by catch, so you

don"t need to go higher. 7igh shutter speeds 'you don"t want blur,

Step 32D!3D transfor"ation

Load your images up on your computer and open up :atch. :lick 2:reate a new photo scene2 and load up your pictures. :lick upload and here $ suggest you have it email you when it asks. $t takes up to two hours to process a set of photos. 9ow sit back and let Autodesk"s cloud servers do all the hard work of figuring out all the geometry5 This is why we invented computers 3/

Step #Clean $p %o$r scan

;ou have by now received an email saying it has successfully created a ./ mesh5 <xciting5 7&L; :0A4. ;our photographs have magically been upgraded5 /ownload this file and open it up in :atch. :lick in the circle in the center and reali=e now that this is not just a photograph, but a full .d navigable model with a !>$95 A#<!&M<555 :heck out the video3

:lick export and save this as an !TL. &pen up Meshmixer. This will let you delete the rest of the scene and leave the object you want to transport alone. ;our objective is to select and delete all the rest of the scene and leave the object your interested in alone. $n Mesh Mixer here are some tips and the process to getting a clean object out3 4ress control and click and drag to move around 4ress control and click and drag with your right mouse button to =oom in and out :lick select in the upper right corner, click 2!witch to lasso mode2 and rope the parts you want &nce you have your object highlighted in orange click 2Modify !election2 and click invert 9ow click 2<dits2 in the top left side and use 2<rase and ?ill2 ;ou can now click export and export a cleaned up version of your ./ scan5 This should give you a solid object representing the object you want to teleport. $t should be mostly ready to print. ;ou can grab my Arjuna file to test if your scan didn"t work. 9ow, let"s take it to the printers5

Step &Print it!

/epending on your ./ printer the instructions will vary, but the general process goes as such3 ), &pen your model in your ./ printers software -, !lice the model into layers ., !end it off to be printed to your machine $f properly built, calibrated, fed, and groomed your ./ printer will print out your object like this3

!o there you have it. ;ou"ve taken an object and transported it digitally elsewhere and it again became a physical object. $magine .+ years of progress in ./ printing@scanning technology. $t has become consumer level, the cost is coming way down and open sourced projects are involving many creative people from around the world to get together to build, update, remix their own machines. The future is going to be awesome, try some teleportation today and let"s figure out where this technology is going together5 And when you do scan it, publish it online5 &n instructables, thingiverse, )-.dApp5 $ published my model and within the day someone had downloaded it, fixed it even more and shared it again5 1e a part of the ./ printing community5 A1

(dd Co""ent ' co""ents

) Ban )+, -+)-. .3.C 4Mbrainsfried says3

very interesting stuff5

)epl%

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*a%ef$$ says3

Fery nice. ;ou should add more info in the step about :atch and a link to it. $t looks interesting5

.6 Ban )+, -+)-. D3CD AM )epl%

*a%ef$$ says3

!orry, $ missed step one 3/ $ was looking for the info in step .. My bad

Ban D, -+)-. ))3.* 4Msolaralternati+es says3

!o true. 4hone companies 9<F<0 7AF< come up with a practical personal video phone, now, have they.. yet skype, yahoo messenger, etc.. #ell, their loss.
)epl%

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"ikeasa$r$s says3

$"ve seen this thing in action and it"s pretty awesome to know that custom plastic parts can be replicated within hours.
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"h,-dk says3

This is indeed very exciting stuff... but currently out of my disposable cash priceHrange 3H'

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kelse%"h says3

$ saw an awesome tweet reposted recently, 29o flying cars yetI2 he wrote from a - inch by C inch pocket computer instantaneously to subscribers worldwide using only his right thumb.

This $"ble is pretty much the same. 27oly sJJt5 #e"re living in the f$t$re52
)epl%

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la"ed$st 'author, says3

$ >9&#5 That"s exactly the way $ feel, it"s so weird for the future to catch up with the present5 $t"s kind of ama=ing to be participating5