My 3D Printing Experience

Last night I took a trip to Maklab (a workshop just off Buchanan St) to do some prototyping for my plastic product.

The parts I was getting printed were 3 sets of interlocking parts, all with slightly differing dimensions. My aim was to find what tolerances I needed to work to for printing my final product, making sure the pieces would slide smoothly together and not lock.

The studio is used by students but there were also people who just use the space in their free time. There were lots of examples of gorgeous 3D printed objects lying around

This bike chain had soluble supports which when dissolved in water, allowed the joints to move

However, none of them could really compete with my masterpiece.

As you can see, one of the printers was having some issues. The plastic wasn't properly sticking to the printer base, and was getting lifted about by the nozzle. Not really sure what to do when this situation arises, I just used a different printer.

You can print in a variety of different plastics and colours, by feeding a different type of plastic thread into the machine before you start your print.

Here are the steps you need to follow to 3D print a model:

1. Make a Solidworks model of your part. Save it as an STL file.

2. Load it in Makerware (http://www.makerbot.com/makerware/) This can either be done at home or at the workshop. It is important to make sure your model isn't too big for the 3D printer! This software checks dimensions and allows you to move your model around on the base.  

Try to make your parts have as much of their surface area on the board as possible

3. Save the file on an SD card (the workshop have these) and put it in the 3D printer

4. Scroll down the menu until you see your file name, press start. The machine will take around 10mins to heat up to starting temperature (220deg).

5. With this printer, the nozzle height has to be adjusted manually once printing has started. The printer faffs around a lot before it actually starts your model so there's plenty of time. Rotate the base of the thread to raise or lower the nozzle.

6. Have a cup of tea

7. Remove print with tweezers

8. Peel off raft. The raft is a sacrificial layer which the machine prints first. It encourages the model to stick to the printer base.

Some of the completed prints: 

The marks are from clumsy tweezering while the plastic was still hot