For the 3D printing project, I decided to print this mouse from Thingiverse. It’s cute!

https://www.thingiverse.com/Olgigi 

I downloaded the file and opened it in Fusion 360 to scale it. At first, it was quite gigantic, so I measured the size of my plastic capsules and made sure to scale the mouse’s body to fit inside. 

However, my mouse ended up having way more wiggle room than anticipated, so I rescaled it by a factor of 1.3, but then it was slightly too big.

So, I resized it again, and it fit perfectly!!!

With sizing done, I printed my four PLA mice. They printed very cleanly and were fully functional, so I didn’t do any post-processing.

Next, I moved on to the resin printing. Tyra and I decided to do our prints together to be more efficient. Once they were done, we put them in the washer for 5 minutes, blasted them with the air compressor, and cured them for 30 minutes. We then removed the supports, but our prints were still kind of sticky, so we washed them for another 5 minutes and cured them for another 10. Then, we tested to see if all the joints would move… and they didn’t.

Many of the joints were just too small/close and got fused together. When trying to loosen the tail joints, I ended up breaking them. The mouse also wouldn’t fit in the capsule properly with the way it snapped, but thankfully, I had printed an extra. I made sure to snap off the other mouse’s tail in a more strategic place so that it could fit.

With that, my mice were complete! 

Overall, this was pretty fun. I love how versatile 3D printing is and will definitely utilize it more in the future. It allows for so much creativity and whimsy!

Cost:

• PLA filament: 8.5g x 4 mice x $0.05 per g = $1.70
• Resin: 11270.415 mm3 volume x $156.45 per liter = $1.76
• 3D printers: Harris County Public Library charges $0.10 per gram = $4.53
• Labor: 7 hours x $7.25 = $50.75

Total cost = $58.74

Here’s my clean workspace!