For the 3D printing homework, the task was to print out something that could only be made using the 3D printer. I picked the infinity cube (shown below) which is an interesting optical illusion of sorts.

The object is actually made with one continuous line of material and doesn’t not have any intersecting points. It fully stands on its own and is still structurally stable. With this design downloaded from thingiverse, we were tasked to print out two copies. One had to be with one of the printers in the wetlab (I used the Fortus) while the other one had to be printed out using one of the printers found in the maker bar.

The first successful print I did was in the maker bar. I set up the design file in the software and had to include rafts in addition to supports. The first print actually did not form due to the material not sticking to the platform. This led to the inclusion of the raft.

The print took approximately 1 hour and the printing process can be seen below.

This print failed due to the curved portions not printing correctly. I tried to rotate the figure to see if the corners could be smoother.

The quality improved slightly but not nearly enough. Past this, I used a different printer that had a different material and it worked extremely well. The end result is shown below.

For my second print, I went into the wetlab and uploaded my file into the software for the Fortus.

After slicing it and prepping the machine, it said that it would take approximately 2 hours to complete. I did not have any issues with this machine and it printed well on the first try. After the 2 hours, the supports needed to be dissolved away. I left it in the bath for 36 hours and removed it for the final product.

This print was very easy to make but took a lot longer to obtain. Both of my prints also fit very nicely into the containers.

In terms of the cost of this homework, the files were free off the internet and most of the time for the prints were dead time where I was waiting for it to finish. Labor costs for this would probably be $69 since the average wage is $23/hour and the actual time I spent doing things was probably about 3 hours. The black cube probably cost <$1 to make while the white cube costs $12 to make. This homework’s total is around $82.