The first project after the midterm should be easy. By all accounts, this was one of the easiest projects so far. No need for designing and building, just a file and time. And yet, this project was easily one of the most frustrating. The project is simple enough. Print an impossible object, or an object that would be pretty much impossible to create without 3D printing. We have to print it twice, with different 3D printers. Then, make it look presentable.

For this project, I wanted to make something featuring hinges that one could fiddle with. I choose this fidget star design by mathgrrl from Thingiverse and tried to print it with the MakerBot printers. The design remarked that it printed without supports or raft, but I wasn’t so sure and opted for both. This was a bad idea. The design took around one and a half hours to print, and it was successful. However, problems started when removing the support. It’s likely that support was printed inside the hinges, making them stiff and useless. The photo below was taken after removing the body supports and before forcing the hinges, breaking the print into eights.

I had two options. Either I printed again without supports and hoped for the best, or changed my design. I opted for the second choice. Browsing Thingiverse, I found this design for hinged polyhedra by mathgrrl again that looked promising. This design took half the time as the fidget star to print and required no support or raft since it was so flat. However, remember how I said this was one of the most frustrating projects? This is where the printers come in. I had to print this design 3 times before having a presentable print, which wouldn’t be that bad except the printers are almost always in use. Honestly, looking back now it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it sure felt like it.

Anyway, on to my first print. I watched the first 5 minutes to make sure everything was sticking correctly, then left to do homework until it was supposed to be done. However, somehow the printer got clogged, resulting in this piece of modern art.

After unclogging the printer, I restarted the print. This time it went on perfectly. It seemed like I was halfway done, but it fiddling with it proved to be too much for the hinges and it fell apart. Most likely, the layer resolution was too big and the hinges had too little space in them. I still had homework left, so I called quits for that day and continued the next.

Before printing on the MakerBots again, I decided to test one of the printers on the wet lab, specifically the Fortus. With the aid of a lab technician, I printed the cube on the Fortus. It took about 4 times as long, but it went off perfectly. Usually, after the Fortus is done, you must put the print with the supports on a lye bath to dissolve the supports, saving you the hassle of removing them manually. However, my print was so flat it just peeled off the support. The lab tech told me that the Fortus was not the best option for my print because of this, though. The print was a success.

Well, at least it looks like it. Does it pass the folding test?

Great. That’s 1 print out, 1 to go. Time to go to the MakerBots again. The next print was stuck to the tape coating the bottom of the MakerBot and warped. This might have happened because I left it too long before picking it up.

The next print was a success. I made the layers smaller so that the hinges did not break, and the MakerBot finally decided to cooperate.

In the end, the most valuable lesson was to not expect a print to work on the first time. Also, schedule more time for 3D prints than what you expect. Most prints take longer than half an hour.