#trophyzoo

[babble-fish]

Tank Finishing Touches

Once the tank was together, all the finishing touches could be added to make the tank complete.

[babble-fish]

All the Rocks!

For our tank, we decided to create a bit of an environment for our babble fish and this included making some rocks for the bottom of the ocean. At first, I thought about how this could be 3D printed and then I saw blue work-out mat foam and thought it would be faster to carve rocks out of that!

To start, I cut various shapes and sizes of rocks using a small blade.

Then I sanded the sides of each rock to give it a smoother surface finish.

Finally, I added a bit of green paint using a natural sponge in order to give it some texture and depth.

TADA! Rocks!

[babble-fish]

The Tank: From Fusion to CNC

For our fish tank, I created a fusion final that would allow for pegs and holes to be cut out on a CNC machine and create nice joinery for our little babble fish.

Then after some edits to help it work on the CNC machine, it was ready to cut.

Finally, a base layer of blue paint was applied and all the pieces were glued together.

[babble-fish]

Fish Fabrication Step 3: Angler and Tail

Howdy again, Alex here. With our fish’s lovely face now physical, it was time to turn our attention to his tail and angler. Josh, Taylor and I had all agreed that we wanted to somehow incorporate LEDs into the fish’s body, as angler fish in real life have bioluminescence. I had seen before how Polylite’s Natural colored PLA filament did a good job of diffusing light, so all I had to do was make sure that the shell wasn’t too thick on either part.

After struggling to make the face and jaw hollow in the previous step, I realized that the best way to make a shell of the tail end would be to use itself as a cutting tool. I duplicated the tail end and then positioned it below the original model and cut off its tail. I then used the tailless duplicate as a cutting tool in fusion and combined bodies to leave behind a super thin shell.

At this point, all that was left was the angler. I brought the model into Fusion so I could make sure it was to scale with the rest of the body parts, and then used a sphere as a cutting tool to leave room inside for an LED.

From here, I was ready to print! I used the same settings that had worked for me on the other fish parts, and while it was pretty scary printing out such a thin shell for the tail end, it worked out really well and the supports were relatively easy to remove!

Now completely physical, our fish boy needed a paint job and to be hooked up to all of our electrical components!

[babble-fish]

Fish Fabricaton Step 2: Sculpting the Face and Jaw

Hi there! Alex again. After making the body of our fishy boy both solid and with a whole lot less polys, it was time to bring him into Fusion 360. The first and most pressing issue was separating the jaw from the rest of the face so that they could be printed and moved independently of one another. 

First, I separated the head and hind regions of the fish model. I knew I wasn’t going to print the tail portion of the fish until much later, so I gave myself some wiggle room by separating them. I also cut the sad little fin off of the body, as the geometry of it had somehow gotten really messed up going from Meshmixer to Slicer and to Fusion.

Moving on from here, I started to hollow out the inner region of the face. My methods were a bit unorthodox, making it seem a bit messy, but it got the job done.

To seperate the jaw from the rest of the head, I made a sketch on the back plane and oriented the viewing area so it was top down. This let me sketch a line that connected along a “natural” seam that the polys made, which I then used to extrude cut away the jaw, keeping it as a new body in Fusion.

I wanted the jaw to slide under the rest of the face, so I scaled it down to 90% of its original size. This looked perfect, but there wasn’t enough clearance for the jaw to slide under.

To fix this, I made some cutting tools that would leave just a sliver of material behind. I made one body by extruding a sketch, and then added on to it by creating a loft from one face to another sketch. This worked really well, leaving just enough material behind for the jaw to slide under.

From here, I modeled in some blocks that we could use as attachment points for our pivots and servo mechanism and got to printing! I had the best success using a full raft and Cura’s auto generated supports at around the default percentage. This was the best way to keep both my prints and the support material from being nudged off of the build plate during printing!

Now physical, we were ready to try out our servo mechanism and see our boy speak!

[babble-fish]

Prototype #2

We then began making our prototypes more complex and flushed out so they could be incorporated into the final project. This included a more exact tank structure and a laser cut fish head.

[babble-fish]

Fish Fabrication Step 1.5: Adventures in Chipboard

Hello, Alex here again! In between first manipulating the fish model in Meshmixer and moving on to working with it in Fusion 360, my team and I were tasked with making a first prototype of our project to better explain what it was exactly going to be. As I was running our fish boy through Slicer at the time anyway, I used the Retina Engrave to cut out the plans that Slicer was generating anyway. After lots of hot glue, frustration, and a servo motor running with a test control board, we had the first iteration of our fish boy. (Please be kind, as he turned out looking a little more like a sad football than I’d have liked.)

[babble-fish]

Fish Fabrication Step 1: Turn Down the Polys

Hello! Alex Jereb here. Throughout this project, I took the lead on digitally fabricating the body of our Babble Fish. Once we had established our concept (a talking angler fish), I started searching for free to use 3d models licensed under Creative Commons. I stumbled upon baudischart’s sculpt of an adorable and friendly-looking fish, and downloaded it. 

I realized that the model had downloaded as a .blend filetype, which is not a file type I usually interact with. I enlisted the help of a friend who works in 3d animation to convert the file from a .blend to a more familiar .stl, which was ready to go into Meshmixer. 

From here, I had two key things to accomplish: slice the model in half, and reduce the poly count so it would fit with the Trophy Zoo visual theme. Slicing it in half was easy enough using the Plane Cut tool after selecting my model. However, it revealed that the model itself was hollow. 

I at first tried to ignore this issue during our initial prototyping with chip board, but I knew that I wanted the final product to be 3D printed, both for sturdiness sake and so that we could take advantage of using translucent filament. See post Step 1.5: Adventures in Chipboard for more details about the headaches of making a chip board model.

Eager to see our fish in a lower resolution, I at first tried to use the Reduce command in Meshmixer to lower the polygon count. This did not give me the results I had hoped for, as for some reason Meshmixer seemed to prioritize the polygons in the sphere of the angler at the expense of the rest of the fish body. Because of this, I elected to use Slicer to reduce the poly count. This gave the added benefit of ensuring all of our polygons were triangles, and not some mix of triangles and squares. I also took this time to separate the angler from the rest of the body while giving it the same slicer treatment.

With this done, I brought the new models back into Meshmixer to make them solid, and then ran them through Slicer once more to clean up some of the funny edges that Meshmixer sometimes makes. From here, I was ready to move on to Step 2: Sculpting the Face and Jaw!