I chose to 3D print an octopus for my impossible object using FDM and SLA printers.  I started by finding a design I liked on Thingiverse and then downloading the stl file. Once I had the file, I measured the capsules so I knew how to scale the part so it could fit. I did not know how much the octopus’s tentacles would move so I had to make an educated guess about the size which ended up working well. Because I wanted to confirm the sizing was correct, I started by only printing onc on a Bambu Lab 3d printer.

Once I confirmed the size was correct, I printed three more on the Bambu Lab printer, and one more on the Formlabs SLA printer. Once all of the FDM prints were done I spent a lot of time removing all of the support material so that the tentacles would move smoothly. I used flush cutters to remove most of the supports, then used a pick to remove the supports from the hard-to-reach places which worked really well.

For the SLA print, there was very little post-processing I had to do after the print was cleaned and then curred. Most of the supports came off very easily, and the remaining little bits could be removed with pliers.

 

Price breakdown

Material cost

FDM – PLA is around $0.02 per gram and I used 11.5 grams for each print which is a total of 92 cents.

SLA – Tough 1500 Resin is $199 for 1 liter and I used 13.12ml for the single print I did which cost 2.61 dollars.

Labor

I spent 30 minutes setting up all of the prints and 2 hours post-processing the prints so at 20 dollars an hour, it would cost 50 dollars of labor.

The total cost was 53.43 dollars or around 10.67 dollars for each print.