Articulated Onix by BODY-3D – Thingiverse

^ For this assignment I decided to print some cool articulated Onix designs that I stumbled upon on Thingiverse.

I started by using the Bambu FDM Carbon printer to print using white PLA. The original file was very large, so I scaled it down to roughly 42x42mm (wrapped around in a circle) sliced in Bambu Studio which took about 30 mins to print start to finish.

Unfortunately, when I was removing the print from the bed I pulled a little too hard and ended up snapping it :(.

But from this test I saw that I could scale it up and have it still fit in the gumball capsule when wrapped so I scaled it up to 50x50mm to increase joint strength. I then printed it again, removing it a bit more carefully this time, and it turned out great. So I printed it 3 more times. The little spike at the top of the head was printed detached from the body to decrease printing time so I used superglue to attach those pieces.

Next was SLA printing. Printing this was also pretty straightforward, just had to use a different slicing software and printer (and wait longer). I have a budget resin printer at home (AnyCubic Photon Mono 2) so I was pretty familiar with the process of washing and curing resin. It did surprise me how long it takes on the Formlabs to wash and cure though, because for the prints on the Mono 2 with Anycubic resin it takes like 2 mins to wash and 2 mins to cure, which is literally 30x faster than on the Formlabs. I guess it really depends on the properties of the resin.

Here are the final results. I’m happy with how it all turned out.

Cost Analysis 

PLA – 6g @ $.02/g x4 = $0.48

Tough Resin – 12.5ml @ $0.19/mL = $2.38

Labor – 2 hrs @ $15/hr = $30

Total cost: $ 32.86