Brains!

[Axe 10]

New to 3D printing, but not to modelling (experienced with Rhino, ZBrush, C4D, among others....).  This, however was a bit of a new experiment for me.  Printing my own brain from a 3D MRI dataset.  Always wanted my brain on my desk.....

This first one I sent to Shapeways to get printed through laser sintering.  Expensive, so I only got it printed 80% of actual size (and hollow).  Figured it would nice with lighting inside, and I couldn't resist putting the lightbulb over it - for when I want to signal I had a good idea!

 

I now have a Ultimaker S5, so I printed the second one full size out of Translucent Blue PET/G.  The most expensive part was filling the hollow structure with PVA.  Used half a spool for that!

 

Hope these animated GIFs attach properly - haven't posted before......

[Axe 10]

I'l love to put the other GIFs here, but I keep getting error "-200" even though they are under the kb size limit.  Anyone know what that means?

 

[SandervG 1,521]

Perhaps your posts needed to be approved by a moderator first. You could try again?

[Axe 10]

Ok, here's another try....  Had to upload them to my website then link them here.

 

This is the first one showing how I made it into a lamp.

 

3 different intensities depending on how "bright" my ideas are..........

Edited March 5, 2019 by Axe
added info

[Axe 10]

And here's the one I printed on my S5, full size.

 

[Axe 10]

And on its stand (stand printed in Ultimaker Pearl White PLA).  The stand has a compartment for the battery pack/controller for the LED lights with a sliding cover.

 

 

 

I think my wife might get tired of my brains spread around the house......

 

 

[geert_2 558]

How did you convert the MRI-data to something slicable (STL/OBJ)?

 

[Axe 10]

I loaded the DICOM file onto a proprietary workstation and used the MRI vendor's software to export an STL file.  I needed to do quite a bit of editing/segmenting to remove the skull, vessels and other soft tissue before generating the model.  I may try using "Slicer" next time as I understand it has pretty decent segmenting tools and is free (so I can do it at home instead of at the MRI site).

After export I loaded the model into ZBrush to do some further clean up before re-exporting from ZBrush as another STL.  Fairly labour-intensive. 

Also used ZBrush to hollow out the model, leaving the walls just under 2mm thick.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Axe
added info

[geert_2 558]

Thanks.