PROCESS

For my impossible object, I began by trying to print a knotted piece, but the print was not coming out well, so I decided to try an articulating object and found this bookworm in Thingiverse!

I scaled the object down to ensure that it would fit within the gumball holder and printed one on the Pruisa i3 MK3 printer, which took approximately 30 minutes. It came out well, but the automatically generated supports were impossible to separate from the glasses on the worm’s face, so I ended up breaking them off, leaving the worm with poor vision.

I printed two more on the Pruisas and two on the Formlabs resin printer–these took 4 hours because of how tall the supports were.

I also printed an extra worm on the Ultimaker.

Although the Ultimaker (gold one) and the Pruisa (black one) are both FFF printers, the Ultimaker generated the supports differently, so the glasses looked great! The detail on the resin print (gray one), especially for the glasses and the mouth, came out very well, but it articulated less smoothly than the FFF printers. Overall, I liked how the Ultimaker print turned out the best, when considering both the aesthetics and the articulating ability.

This was a fun and quick project!

COST

3D printer rental time: 5.5 hours at $12/hour – $66

Labor: 30 minutes at $20/hour – $10

Total – $76