It has been 329 days since March 13, 2020, the date that Texas declared that we’re in a state of disaster due to COVID. Baking bread and making dalgona coffee were popular skills to learn at the beginning of quarantine, so now we’re moving it to the next level: 3D printing!
For this assignment, I got inspiration from the upcoming Lunar New Year and decided to make 3-D printed mooncake molds (technically, these are more for Mid-Autumn Festival, but my family still ate moon cakes for LNY). The reason I believe that this is an impossible object is because of the the details in the petals of the mold that would not be possible with other manufacturing processes.
The mooncake mold design used from this open-source file: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4602926
FDM
After importing the file in the “Layout” workspace on 3DPrintingOS, I scaled down the file to about 50% so that the print would fit in the gumball capsule. My first print used purple PLA, and it turned out a lot better than expected, especially since this is my very first time using a 3D printer. The learning curve wasn’t too bad, and printing remotely went a lot smoother than I anticipated. I didn’t have to worry about removing supports because my print was flat on the bottom.
Though I couldn’t pick up my prints in person for a little bit, Sarah was kind enough to pick up my prints for me so that they didn’t end up in the trash bin.
(Shout out to Sarah for picking up my prints for me)
Thankfully, my first print was a success! I then remotely printed three more.
All four FDM prints together
SLA:
SLA printing was a challenge to do remotely. Thankfully I had Hoang and Sarah help me out with the printing while I stayed remote (Hoang’s blog post has more details about the group’s struggles with “ghost prints” vanishing). Unfortunately, when the supports for my print were removed, it took off some of the bottom of the print and the print lost a lot of the embedded details of the mooncake mold, but I’d like to think that this would produce some unique mini mooncake designs.
My SLA print
Proof of concept on how the mold would work (using some questionable, homemade play-doh)
Cost analysis:
- Material: $0.32 for PLA, $2.65 for SLA
- Labor: $60 (4 hours @ $15 per hour)
- Machinery access: $12 for FDM, $4 for SLA
Total: $78.97
