Overall, I enjoyed this project and how straightforward it was. It was fun seeing everyone’s different chosen designs, and just the idea of how much a 3D printer can do was inspiring.
My first print on the FDM printer was very, very small. I directly sent the thingiverse file to the printer without any edits and it came out very small with a full raft.
I edited my next print to be an appropriate size for the little capsules and switched it to having just a brim. I noticed this one had material inside of the holes and I also quickly realized a brim and raft aren’t necessary.
A classmate helped me realize that the material isn’t infill but the automatically chosen “generate support” that the system has. I took that off as well as any skirts, brims, and rafts and printed. The prints came out great and I was really satisfied with them. It was cool to see the successful print for the first time.
Next, I moved onto SLA printing. The first attempt ran out of material and failed and I never saw it ):
My second attempt was successful! It was a straightforward process with some inconvenient waiting times that had me at the OEDK until 9:30. I just replicated this process with the next print and was finally finished with the project! The only downside was that SLA printing created supports for my object and these were a bit hard to remove – some parts of the support are still stuck inside my pyramids!
It’s a bit hard to get on camera, but there’s tiny orange sticks inside this tetrahedron.
This was definitely one of the least stressful/time-consuming projects in our class. However, the wait times and free-for-all set up of the Maker Space was a bit stressful. I was queued up multiple times ready to print and after stepping away for a minute, the printer was already taken!
If I could do this project again, I’d probably choose a more fun design. I had no idea there were cooler impossible objects until I was 2 prints in ):
Cost Calculations:
Time: ~5 hrs @ $15/hr = 75
Materials:
- Pink PLA = $20.87
- Grey PLA = $17.20
- Red PLA = $17.20
- Grey Resin = $36.99
- Orange Resin = $24.99
Machines:
- FTM Printer: 3.5 hours @ $30/hour = $105
- SLA Printer: 1.5 hours @ $30/hour = $45
TOTAL: $342.25
