(for the world’s smallest birds)

For this homework assignment, I decided to try to print a nested, collapsible birdhouse that is printed in a compact cube before folding out to a somewhat hemispherical shell. Here is the file on thingiverse showing the action I was expecting:

 

The problem lay in the fact that the example shown is about 6 inches wide when printed, so the print box is about 6x4x4 inches. This was too big for our constraints of 3x3x3, so I scaled it down to half of its original size during the process of laying out the pack for the printer. I then printed it out on the Dimension printer which uses fused deposition modeling. I chose this printing method due to the fact that the shape is relatively simple, with the exception of the hinges, which turned out to be the downfall of the project. Immediately out of the printer, the birdhouse looked like it worked very well. It was nested just as the website prescribed:

However, when I attempted to unfold the leaves of the house, they would always want to spring back into the closed position. Suspecting that the small parts of the hinges had become fused together. This turned out to be the case, as the one side of the hinges eventually snapped. However, after continual cycles, the house now operates well when the hinge parts are first manually aligned:

 

There was another intriguing print error that can be seen in this second picture on the bottom of the perch below the door. If you reference the first picture, you can see that the rain door and the perch (The two protrusions from the top of the largest leaves) were printed at an angle nearly vertical, but not quite. This means that every layer had to rely on the support material quite a bit to ensure it kept its shape. However, with the support material fill level set to sparse, the perch collapsed in places, especially along the bottom edge:

Scaling issues aside, 3D printing is a truly amazing process. These parts would be very difficult to make with traditional techniques, requiring a huge amount of skill and probably a lot of wasted material. Had the hinge not broken in the way that it did, it would’ve been possible to modify the assembly to use a bolt and washers as a hinge, which would’ve been been much smoother. I just wish I had given myself more time to make more versions.