Hello World!

In this project, I ended up 3D printing the “Articulated Slug” design from Thingiverse. This design is “impossible” because it prints all at one time, but has interlocking pieces that allow it to move.

At first, however, I was not planning on making the articulated slug. Initially, I intended to print this “Voronoi” Bulbasaur figure.

I ended up trying to print this for a while, but things didn’t necessarily work out. First, I attempted to print the Bulbasaur on the Objet printer, using the Tango Black Plus material, which is squishy and rubbery. I thought it would make for a cool toy that could be squished easily. So, I set up the print on the Objet, and let it do its thing.

The print was successful, so I moved on to removing the support material from around the Bulbasaur, as well as inside of it. This is where things went wrong. Because of the nature of the Tango Black Plus material, and the thin structures on the figure, when I attempted to clean out the support with the pressurized water, I ended up obliterating the entire thing. Whoops. I guess the water was too much for Bulbasaur.

After the Objet failure, I decided to take a shot on the Maker Gear printer. I printed the same Bulbasaur figure, without any support. It seemed fine at first, but about halfway through the print, the plastic began to lift off of the printer bed, and Bulbasaur lost his foot. I stopped this print, and considered my options.

I next attempted to print using a raft to keep the Bulbasaur adhered to the bed. This Bulbasaur came out fully, but I was unhappy with the way that its underside looked due to the raft. Because of this, I decided to change my design to my second idea, the articulated slug.

For the slug, I basically followed the same procedure. I started on the Objet, except I used the VeroWhite material, which is rigid unlike Tango Black Plus. Additionally, I scaled down the model of the slug to around half of its original size so that it would fit neatly in the given containers. Other than that, I did the same steps, setting up the file, printing it, and removing the support with the pressurized water.

After finishing with the Objet slug, I started a print on the Maker Gear. I scaled it by the same amount as on the Objet, and printed without supports, at 35% infill (although because it is so small, the infill didn’t matter all that much). The slug stuck to the print bed quite well, and the print was successful the first time around.

After the print finished, I removed the slug, and there actually wasn’t any post-processing to do. Now, I had my two impossible objects!

In this project, I learned a lot more about the Objet printer, such as how to use its interface and what kinds of objects might not work on it. I’d like to try to print in Tango Black Plus successfully at some point, but I learned a lesson about it this time around. Additionally, I learned that the different printers at the OEDK have different strengths and weaknesses.