For my 3D design, I wanted to make a piece that could actuate and move (inspired by all the cool 3D printed projects I have seen in the past). I found this great articulate piece on thingiverse of a mouse with a hinge neck and chain tail. I thought this would be the best to print as one of my first 3D printed objects at the OEDK since it had a variety of different components and mechanisms.

Before clarifying the instructions of the assignment, I printed 5 total mice from the FLM Prusa printers using PLA, 3 approximately 25 mm in width and 2 approximately 20 mm in width. They came out well for the most part; however, I had a lot of trouble removing all of the raft support from the tail portion of the 25 mm mice and the raft support from the centerline of the 20 mm mice.

After learning this, I began printing a triplet set of 25 mm on the SLA printer with supports intended to be easier to remove. This is at the point in my progress of this project where the machines started to become uncooperative with me. The SLA print failed, with the supports becoming jumbled and messy before being able to print out the mice.

Learning from this print, I changed the design of the support to print out a duo set of mice on a simpler brim support. This came out slightly better, with one of the mice becoming slightly disfigured in the removal process (thankfully one still came out). With post processing, this mice came out the best compared to the rest of the FLM printed mice.

After clarifying the instructions of the assignment, I print out another duo set of 25 mm mice with a brim support instead. Unfortunately, the FLM printer print my duo set had clogged its extruder, stopping the print of the duo. With not much time left before the deadline of the project (beer bike week got super hectic), I decided to keep one of the 20 mm mice as my fifth printed object (although it is slightly smaller).

To top it all off, as I fitted the mice into the capsules, I hadn’t taken into consideration the rigidity of the tails when measuring the size of the mice bodies for printing (I assumed the tails would be limp enough to wrap in the capsule, leaving the majority of the capsule’s space taken by the body of the mice). As such, some of the ends of the tails of the 25 mm mice had snapped when fitted, leaving them injured. Thankfully, the neck mechanisms of all of the mice had been conserved, saving the 3D printed hinge mechanism intact.

Overall, the prints were satisfactory. I do think additional prints to best fit the mice size and functionality would have benefitted the end products. With better time management and planning, the final product could have been much more functional (I now understand the time needed to best use the 3D printers).

If I could redo this project, things I could improve upon:

• Allot more time to print out different versions of print
• Invest more time to be careful when removing supports
• Use brim supports in cases of smaller objects (raft supports were too thick to remove)
• Choose a less intricate design for such a small print

Cost Estimate:

Material:

PLA print material: ~$1 (including unfinished prints)

Resin print material: ~$1 (including unfinished print)

Time:

FDM machine runtime: 18 hr (including incomplete prints)

SLA machine runtime: 3 hr (not including incomplete print)

3 hours*$9/hr (price based on minimum wage in Texas and cost of operating tools and machinery used) = $27

Total Cost: ~$29