This assignment was definitely the one I had looked forward to the most since the beginning of the semester. I’ve never had the chance to use a 3D printer before so I was excited to see what I could create.

In class, Dr. Wettergreen showed us some examples of 3D printed objects that were made using a variety of 3D printers. The object that fascinated me the most was the chain mail/ bracelet made out of interlocking rings. I was really impressed by the way the 3D printer was able to print objects that were interlocking because the possibility of doing so never crossed my imagination. So, for this project, I wanted to print something that had interlocking components.

Thingiverse proved to be a great resource for 3D printed designs and .stl files. After skimming through the website, I found this triple gear that I really liked:

The awesome part of this design is that all three gears actually turn! The gears mesh and rotate together when all three of the gears are rotated at the same time. Once I downloaded the .stl file, it was time to 3D print the triple gear.

The biggest take away I had from this project is that 3D printing a file is not as simple as opening the file on the computer programme and then having the file sent to the machine directly for printing. The programme had to take a number of steps to ensure that the object was not just a large blob of plastic sitting on the plate of the 3D printer. First, it had to slice the 3D design on its z-axis and then create a support structure for the object. It then had to create the tool paths required to print the object before finally sending the file to the 3D printer for printing. The triple gear design proved to be much more complicated than I first expected so it took almost 10 minutes for the file to be prepared by the programme.

In total, the printing took about 13 hours and dissolving the support structure took almost a whole day but it was worth the wait. Here are some pictures of the final product:

I was very pleased with the quality of the print (and the fact that it was yellow). However, moving the gears proved to be quite difficult. The creator of this design on Thingiverse did point out that it was going to be difficult to turn the gears at the beginning but that with time (and some force), the gears should be able to move as smoothly as it did in his demonstration video.

Overall, I enjoyed watching the whole 3D printing process unfold. Dr. Wettergreen was right when he said that this would be a simple assignment, but I did learn a lot about the 3D printing process and what I should expect when I use a 3D printer in the near future.