Programmatically generating mesh (STL) 3D object files

[OutsourcedGuru]

I did something clever a while back that I wanted to share. I wanted to use the three.js module in JavaScript server-side in Node which is problematic since there’s no Window and therefore no Canvas object to render to.

Working around those limitations, I then created a CLI app to accept text to render into a 3D context then convert into a mesh file, suitable for importing into a CAD app or slicing directly in Cura, for example, then ready-to-print on a 3D printer. The JavaScript translates the incoming text into character representations within the scene (to the accepted braille standards).

OutsourcedGuru/3d-braille

[Josh]

Nice, I’ve been meaning to learn Braille, but I’m not sure where to start.

[OutsourcedGuru]

I think I’d start from the left… and then work your way to the right.

[OutsourcedGuru]

One of the projects I’d like to build would be a bluetooth braille glove with a tactile array for index and middle fingers as well as accelerometers. You could then gesture with two fingers left-to-right and it would tactilely create the impression of feeling three or four braille characters. You could pair this with either a webcam with OCR feature or perhaps webpages could embed braille objects to be “spoken” like this.