This week I was working on 3D printing things in the OEDK, but not just anything, impossible objects! I wanted to create an articulating butterfly, because to me it seemed really cool to be able to create something that moved and yet was printed as 1 solid object. I went with the design below which can be found on thingy verse, and I went with the version that  had stronger joints and a hole through the design. I chose this because I figured as I scaled down the design, stronger joints would be more important as they would need to be more robust at smaller sizes, and the regular design may not cut it. The hole through the butterfly was originally used for a copper wire to help pose the model, however I figured it could be used as an outlet to allow resin to flow out during the SLA print I would have to do later on.

Printing Process
I have worked with 3D printers before, and so I didn’t have too much trouble with the process of setting up the prints. The problem came when I began to print them the first time when I scaled them down to about 30% so that they would be about 50 mm in length, able to fit inside the capsules we were given. However I don’t believe this worked out very well, as I was unable to find my pieces in the broken parts bin, besides one broken piece of what I assume was my butterfly. I can imagine what happened was that the print was simply too small to articulate the joints holding together the butterfly, and so it simply was not held together and fell apart. To fix this, I fixed the scaling to only 65% of the original design, which was indeed larger but I figured if they could be scrunched up so they would still fit inside the capsule. This worked better, but to a varying degree. I used a skirt on the print to hopefully get the filament flowing and I would not have any problems with the prints, however as seen below there were still some problems.

As you can see some of the butterflies had some fraying on the antenna, and some where stiffer than others with the bottom right one being not very flexible at all. My SLA print came out interesting as well, as the first one did not print properly due to the small size, and when it was blown up to be the same scale as my second attempt the print came out fine however it was very much like the bottom right print in which that it was very stiff and did not flex as much.

Cost

Labor: 1 Hour @ 15$ an hour – $15

Materials: according to 3DPrinterOS – $1.69

Total: $16.69