2017 Year of the Rooster 3D Printed in Algix Dura Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV08x0R8tpM

Code for 3D Scholars: J:LUVLXJ PJ LUVMJ

Technically this is a day late. While January 28th is Chinese New Year, just like the New Year I'm most acquainted with, the day itself is pretty much secondary to the day before and the countdown at midnight. So apologies to all my Chinese viewers to not getting this out in time.

Download the Garden Rooster scan here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:189558

Find out more about Algix Dura on their web site: algix3d.com

3D printed pompom ring

This silly little project was motivated by a twitter conversation between myself, the 3D Printing Noob, and the 3D Pritning Cheerleading Squad of Lauren Renee and Heather of A Pyro Design. When an offhand conversation goes to production in less than a day, I can't really charge for that one. So when I uploaded it it went to PinShape, naturally, but also Thingiverse. I don't upload as much to Thingiverse these days, but this one seemed perfect.

I find this sort of forced failure model to be gimmicky and I worry that in 5 years they will be an interesting footnote in 3D printing's history. Vase printing as well. However, it wasn't difficult to do, and the result is fun. I sometimes get caught up in my own high-mindedness, and so I think it was good to let it go and do something silly. In fact I'm thinking about making a livestream out off this project later this week.

You can download your own PomPom ring on Pinshape or Thingiverse and print it for yourself.

The surprising necessity of a fan when 3D printing

Left, no fan, right, light fan.

This may come as a shock to you, but there was a time where a downward blowing fan was not standard equipment on most 3D printers. The 3D printing technology at the time, developed by the likes of 3D Systems and Stratasys, never needed one. They were printing ABS in enclosures. And so the reprap based printers, starting from that known system, used ABS and it was known that even a light breeze could destroy an ABS print due to shrinkage. It wasn't until later that the idea of other materials that could benefit from a cooling fan started to be developed.

Even support removal is improved

While printing the models that I modeled in the last video, the print I started in the video had to be canceled because the material I was using needed to be printed at a much higher temperature, I assumed because it had been mislabeled ABS. But after printing it there were still a lot of problems that I started cleaning up. Then it struck me, maybe this wasn't ABS. Maybe it was a high temp PLA (I bought it at a clearance sale, so I can't really be sure all the time). So experimentally I set up my jankey cooling system (because my printer didn't come with one by default).

The different was dramatic. One day I'm gonna get the scratch together to upgrade this old rig, but until then, if you ever wonder why your 3D printer has a cooling fan, this is why:

While every part of the print is greatly improved, even the finish, the effect on the stem is probably the easiest to see in these pictures. It's dramatically amazing.

Are you getting in on the 3D Block Zoo?

It started when the better half of A Pyro Design, Heather, did her first 3D modeling in Tinkercad, a simple bunny that started as a default cube, followed later by a swan.

Then SparkyFace5 on Twitter made her own animals and took to YouTube to put out a call to action and, boy, has it taken off.

Thing is making an animal for the 3D Block Zoo movement is super fun and easy. Just fire-up TinkerCad, drag in a default cube, and you're going. You could do it in more complicated modeling programs, i guess, but if you're speding more than 30 minutes on your animal you're doing it wrong (in my humble opinion). I've done a whale and chameleon, and my sons have contributed an elephant and dragacorn, which is exactly what it sounds like. And in printing their models my sons learned about supports and how to design for 3D printing. I couldn't be more thrilled. They're now going back and iterating their designs to make them less reliant on supports!

Seeing how successful my kids were at it I think in the future if someone asks how to start modeling for 3D printing, I'm actually going to recommend to take a standard cube and decorate it like their favorite animal and see what happens.

So check out what people have done on Twitter and TinkerCad maybe try out your own.

What about variable width?

I had been printing lithophane maker coins... note to self, make a post about my new maker coins. Anyways, I was making lithophanes, the best settings for which are 1 shell, 100% infill, 0 top layers (since the infill covers that). Then when I switched to another print, a quarter top of a cylinder, and I changed the infill back to 20%... but forgot the shells and top layers settings, and this is the result.

The weird thing is the sides are just fine. Perfect in fact.

I recently saw a video about audodesk's varislice. When I saw the video I was like, I never print something so perfectly angled in heights. And then I print this thing. Ah well. The thing is, I don't mind variable height, in fact I love the idea of saving time by doing thicker layers where you can. But what about variable width? A lot of time number of shells is treated as a constant, as well it should be. Fewer shells is a theoretically weaker part, more shells is a theoretically stronger part. Theoretically. Someone should test this. Anyways, what if the goal was speed and minimizing material usage then layer height isn't the only consideration. Top layers generally handles this, but increasing the number of shells in the area could do it, possibly better.

I think this really illustrates that we aren't done advancing slicers at all and there's still a lot to be excited by.

When not to use the cooling fan

I'm printing a job of a character holding a staff at various sizes. At 2" tall the model prints fine. A little larger, it's fine. But jump to 6 inches tall and the prints failed repeatedly.

I tried everything. I made the staff thicker. more shells, added supports (manually), brought the printer in doors. No matter what I did the result was always the same. The staff and arm would be off, or they would fall over all together, and cause a cascading failure. The funny thing was on my replicator 1 the model worked, but on my replicator one the overhangs looked terrible because it doesn't have a cooling fan.

...wait a minute.

On the FlashForge there's a cooling fan that blows cool air right onto the plastic as it comes out the left nozzle. It makes PLA prints very happy. It's a pain in the butt if you ever need to get at the extruder assembly, but it generally made the prints pretty. However, in this case, could the air from this thing be what was causing terminal wiggle when the staff got too big? To experiment I turned the fan off and tried again.

Sure enough that's when this model's prints started succeeding. So I pulled the fan duct off so that I wouldn't have to remember to turn the fan off with every print (and moved the printer back into the cold garage so it's effect was less necessary) until this job was finished.

Cooling fans. Sometimes they really improve a print, but sometimes, when making tall towers, they can be the death of them. Go figure.

3D printed L Bracket Drawer Repair

The particle board behind my daughters drawer did what particle board does over time. So instead of running to the store to get some L brackets to fix it I decided to try 3D printing them. Learning from last time I decided to search Yeggi first. Couldn't find exactly what I wanted, though I did find an interesting project, so I went ahead with modeling it myself. Took all of 15 minutes. Then  printed them in ABS, 100% infill, vapor smoothed, and installed. And they worked.

Mostly. Okay, so the left side brackets cracked because I screwed them too much, but they're still holding well, so I'm goign to go with it. Clearly 3D printed brackets aren't flawless, but they're good enough and holding for now. And if they fail I can always print some new ones.

Or just run to the hardware store this time.

A squishy friend for the portfolio

I realized my thing portfollio needed an example of a ninjaflex print, so I made a squishy Yog Soggoth. I don't know why it amuses me so much to have a flexible lovecraft flying spaghetti monster, but it does.

Literally reinventing the wheel.

Our dishwasher rack slipped and fel against the heating element melting one of the wheels so my wife suggested I fix this with 3D printing like I've done before. So flexing my manly mouse pushing muscles I loaded up Blender and started modeling, scratching my head about what concessions I would have to make to have it print without supports (like I do) and realizing there'll need to be at least some supports, but I could minimize them.

Then on Google Plus I see someone else 3D printing the exact same wheel I was modeling. "Would you be willing to share the model?" I asked. "I just downloaded them from Thingiverse." came the reply.

See, this is the problem, if there can be said to be a problem, with knowing how to model. Sometimes your brain jumps to the more complicated solution. I was literally reinventing the wheel. If I had bothered to pull up Yeggi and look I'd find a ton for me to sort through to find the right one, but that's still better than doing it myself.

Lesson learned. Maybe. Probably not, actually.

The ultimate vanity object

Or ultimate heirloom. This was made by taking a scan of my wife with a Kinect and editing it. When printing I changed filament and then smoothed the print. The scannect doesn't take a lot of details, so this is a less detailed cameos, but it works okay.

I learned something when making this. The cameo is ABS, the setting is PLA. But I accidentally glued them together before smoothing the cameo. I figured the acetone would only effect the ABS, so I popped them in the smoother together. Didn't know acetone softens PLA. Permanently apparently. Doesn't smooth it but makes it soft enough that I can't use it any more. So I had to make another one.

What you see ain't always what you get

I printed  the Zheng mini defender, partially to test it for Wood Wars 3D.

The print looked good.

But it fired less good. 

I think the problem was the filament I used was drooly so the delivery mechanism didn't move easily enough. However I also wasn't sure what to string it with. I used floss. And the legs broke whilepositioning them. Whatever the reason this is going to need a little more engineering, I think.

Now, I should be clear, I've always admired Zheng's work. So I have high hopes in borrowing his ideas to make something I can use in the future. Just not sure this one is it. I liked it because it seemed so simple, but maybe that's not the solution I'm looking for.

Successfully printing flexy

The mod to my bot to make my bot flexible friendly was successful. Of course printing ninjaflex also means slowing down, way down, from what I'm used to. But it works.

So I printed a model that had long, tall sections, and learned that flexible prints need to be... sturdy. It's kind of a no brainier now that I know it, but a tall unsupported section in flexible filament will wiggle and the wiggle gets worse the taller from the platform it goes. A 1.6 mm wall is good for the first 15 mm or so, but past that it gets worse and worse.

But this thing ain't delaminating for nothing. Even pulling it against the grain is fine. This ninjaflex is impressive stuff.

My second Wood Wars 3D mailer went out this morning. It comes with it's own meta game, spot the typos. I'm gonna have to bring my game to keep you people around after next week.

Harry Potter Crests for my Son's School

Last year my eldest son's grade did some Harry Potter themed instruction and I made a wand for him. This year my second son is in the same grade and his idea was to print a Gryffindor crest for his group. I decided to make crests for all the houses to be fair. Fortunately there are excellent crests already made online, so it was just a matter of running them off.

But just a crest? What are they going to do with them? I considered many options but in the end I decided to just make a little desk stand for them. When I was looking for the display stand for my book I was surprised that none of the solutions I found were of a 2 piece style that I seemed to remember existing made out of wood... though a search online hasn't revealed the style I had in mind. But I decided to have a go at it anyways.

Modeling this stand was an exercise in the boolean include modifier. First I modeled the shape of the stand from the side. Then I modeled a 4mm thick sheet, rotated it 20 degrees around the z, moved it over a bit and mirrored it to make the "V" shaped wedge shape, then boolean included it through the stand. Then I made two half cube shapes with joints so they'd join together and boolean included them to make the two halves.

The joints didn't work as well as I hoped. The final design needed to be glued to hold it together. Looking back I don't know why I separated them, they would have printed fine standing up. Of course separated the way they were made me realized it could be redesigned with a hinge in the next version if it ever comes to that, but this works for now.

I've uploaded the two part mini stand on YouMagine.

Fixing a soap stamp order with MakeXYZ

I make a lot of soap stamps. So before I left on vacation a few weeks back I was wrapping up an order for Soaps McGotes and while I usually send the customer a proof for their approval I accidentally skipped that step in my rush, and of course this is the time that I really shouldn't have skipped that step. Monica Moore messaged me to tell me I had spelled it "Soaps McGoats". But I was already 2000 miles away from my 3D printer. I didn't want Monica to have to wait so I once again hired another 3D printer through MakeXYZ to print the correction for me.

Unfortunately there were no 3D printers close enough to Monica that I could forgo shipping all together, but as I already reported an oddly familiar 3D printer was close.

This marks my second experience hiring out 3D printing and both times my experience was pretty uniform. Know your print, find a printer, haggle, go. It's kinda disappointing that the haggle step is still in there. I think a video version of my "How to print without a 3D printer" is eminent. But that aside both experiences have been pretty positive.

Guiding the wise guys

We have a Nativity in our house that is kid safe. So naturally the star quickly went missing. Thank heavens it was the monochromatic part with the simple geometry.

A little measuring of the peg with my calipers and it was off to Blender. Rotate the default cube 45 degrees, subdivide in the X and Y, pull the corners out and triangulate top face and voila, a new star. I'm still not completely in the habit of using the bevel modifier, so the bevel on the tops are (gasp) permanent but for a one-off project it's just fine. I considered taking some license with the design but in the end I opted to make something that wouldn't stand out.

Then after printing it got a double dose of the vapor smoother. I may have even dropped some of the acetone condensation on the middle of it. But it made it indistinguishable from the rest of the set, so I say mission accomplished.

JoiTorii

Don't know why, but when I saw the JoiTorii on Pinshape I just had to print one. Maybe it's because I'm more otaku than I like to admit. Whatever the reason my showoff shelf.

Printed laying down with supports. But it turns out it's more subtly curved than I expected so the supports didn't come off cleanly. So I ran it through the vapor smoother. It still looks less good from the back, but no one will ever see that.

21st century fix-it man.

We had a broken part in the dishwasher that kept the metal tracks from sliding out too far. Where would we got to find this part? I have no idea. Could we buy just the part we need? Who knows? Could I 3D print it instead? Oh yes.

Broken, first iteration, final fix

All it took was calipers, an hour with Blender, and a couple tries to get it right.

In it's new home

Of course I still made a few mistakes. Like printing it so the layers go laterally to where the stress is going to be. I coated it with acetone to hopefully prevent this from being a problem in the future, but I'm guessing I'll be printing yet another replacement for this one in the future, next time printed properly so the layers run with the stress it'll be taking. but for now the dishwasher doesn't fall out when you pull it too far.

Installation was a pain and I'm not looking forward to that in the future. Maybe I can avoid it if I plan a bit better.

Beefing up the portfollio

To everyone in America, happy Thanksgiving. To outside America, don't let that stop you from overindulging just a little today, if for no other reason that it's Thursday.

I'm just going to be beefing up my portfolio with pictures and renders of some projects I've been working on lately. So apologies to those following me on Google+ for the deluge this day. Here's hoping you're so busy with friends, family, and food that you don't notice until tomorrow.

Ugh, supports.

While designing the succubus for Just Game I discovered completely by random a similar winged female figure on myminifactory. Curious how the designer managed to acomplish what I couldn't I decided to dig in and I found the following:

1. His model is much larger.
2. His model is in parts that you have to glue together
3. The parts were oriented to print successfully

I was a bit doubtful about the third claim. But the designer said they were using a similar 3D printer than I was, so I decided to try it out. I turned on supports and sliced the model in makerware and tried it out.

Not even half way through I check the print. The miserably failed print. I guess there were some parts that didn't entirely fail. So how does it look on the other side?

Yup.Every time. Every time I try to print a rounded shape on the bottom with supports on the result is always the same. Icky poo.

If anyone has any insight on how to succussfully print round shapes like this in ABS I'd love to hear them

Book stand and yarn needle

Yup, that's what's going on there. The yarn needle was not a project I would have done were I not related to some yarners. (Yarnies? Yarnites?) I guess sometimes you need to go around a sleeve or something and apparently it was easier to ask me to model and 3d printing versus hitting an existing needle with a heat gun and bending it around a can. And apparently it was easier because I went and designed and printed it before realizing I should suggest the can.

And the book stand? Product placement, baby.

I modified DeSign's book stand considerably, but the edits were so trivial that I don't feel they merit their own entry. I changed the angle from 30 degrees to 10 and made the stands half as thick. But it was easy to do this in edit mode in Blender.

Funny thing, when I found this design it was by searching for "book stand" on yeggi. But when doing this write up, knowing the design was on thingiverse, I went there and did the same search and found... not DeSign's. The lesson here is clear. When you're looking for a 3d model hit yeggi first, even if you know what you're looking for is on thingiverse.