This week I made an impossible object using 2 styles of 3d printing: Stereolithography (SLA) and Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM).

Because I am experienced with Blender, I wanted to take a shot at making an impossible object myself. Here is what the Blender Viewport looked like once I was done designing:

Once I had the file all finished and exported, me and some other classmates decided to print ours on the same bed.

After the printing, I had a whole nest of supports to get rid of, the SLA prints definitely looked the coolest right off the printer; this one here looks kind of like a building in a futuristic movie.

   

 

Cost Breakdown:

Material:

3.19 mL of Gray Pro resin-$199 for 1L- $0.64 per piece, 3 pieces = $1.91 for SLA pieces.

2.4m of PLA filament for 2 rings = $0.13

Total material cost: $2.04

Labour:

I spent 30 minutes designing the file.

I spent a total of 1 hr setting up prints.

I spent 30 minutes removing supports and removing excess material.

That is a total of 2 hours, and with an estimate wage of $18/hour in Houston the labor cost would be $36.

Total Cost: $38.02

The vast majority of the cost of this item is in the labor.

If I were to do this again, I would make the items even more complex, I underestimated just how exact (and awesome) the SLA printing is.