This week we were tasked with 3-D printing impossible objects for the OEDK gumball machine. This was one of my first times 3-D printing and was by far the best experience I’ve had! Last year, I did some 3-D printing for my Engi200 project and had our prints fail several times. However, this time around, the prints went pretty smoothly, making me feel much better about 3-D printing overall.

I went on Thingiverse and chose a Flexi-rex, which is basically many vertebrae of a t-rex that fit together to form an entire dinosaur. As a dinosaur fanatic, I thought this was super cool and jumped at the idea of being able to print it. It’s impossible because the parts that connect the vertebrae are interconnected and could not have been produced by another machine.

The first printer I used was the maker gear printer with hot pink filament.

The print took about half an hour. At first, we had some issues because it failed and the filament was not cooperating, but eventually it produced this lovely dinosaur. I was very happy with how it turned out. The written material cost was $0.21.

Next, I moved onto a wetlab printer. I decided to use the Fortus because a lab tech, Tifani, advised me on the fact that it would produce the vertebrae connections smoothly.

 

After a bit of calculation to figure out the size ratio, I began the print. It took about an hour and a half to print.

After it was done printing, I had to put it in the lye bath so that the supports would dissolve. It was in for 24 hours and then this was the end result.

Because this printer needs a new slide every time there is a new print, it automatically costs $5 to print on it, so my print ended up costing $10.84. Altogether, both of my prints using the two different types of printers cost $11.05.

 

I was very happy with how easy it was to use both printers and will definitely 3-D print more in the future!