Hey everyone! This week I’ll be talking about the impossible object I made through 3D printing with the Bambu Slicer and PreForm printers. The project was fairly straightforward and our main task was to scale it into the dimensions of a gum ball container, but I really enjoyed it and am happy with my finished product.

DAY 1: Downloading Softwares & Slicing (30 minutes)

The first step I took in completing this project was downloading the PreForm and Bambu Slicer softwares onto my computer in order to minimize time at the Maker Bar. Due to the project being fairly straightforward, I think I would have just found my object at the Maker Bar and sliced it there, but in the future I’ll definitely use a CAD software to make the object on my computer and slice it before sending it over to the Maker Bar. This was the first time I’d used Thingiverse.com so it was fun exploring the different objects you can make on there and I’m happy with the bookworm I ended up printing!

During this time I also measured the gum ball container and found it to have an inner diameter of 47.4 mm and a total height of 49.5 mm.

DAY 2: Re-slicing & Printing (1.5 hours)

Since the print job was straight from Thingiverse I just ended up finding the file at the Maker Bar and slicing it on the computer there. To make sure the sizing was correct I printed one bookworm at 0.7 scale first.

The 0.7 scale was actually a bit small and I felt like I could increase the size of the object while still keeping it inside the limits of the gum ball container so I reprinted it with its original scale. Due to it being early in the holiday weekend I was able to find a printer for both the PreForm and Bambu Slicer prints at the same time to get them going. It probably would have been smart to only print one of the objects when checking if the original scale would work, but I was fairly confident that it would. The bookworm didn’t curl as much as I had originally hoped it would, but the joints did help it fit better in the end.

At the same time I printed the 4 objects on the Bambu printers, I also printed one on the PreForm printer.

DAY 3: Pick-Up & Post-Processing (1 hour)

When taking the PreForm print out, cleaning it, and curing it, I realized the supports were a bit different, but was able to take those off with pliers and file down the bottom to make it smooth. I really like how the PreForm print came out!

I was a bit bummed when taking the supports off of the Bambu printer’s prints as the reading glasses on the worm were impossible to keep on while taking the supports around its face off. Due to this, the PreForm bookworms are truly just worms, but that’s ok! There wasn’t a ton of post-processing with the PreForm prints, but I did have to take off a few additional supports on the belly of the object in addition to the ones near the glasses.

I put each of my prints into the gum ball containers with purple lids along with a small slip of paper with the title and author of the Thingiverse.com object and left them on the ENGI210 table for grading alongside a sneak-peak of my final project with Alice!

Cost Breakdown

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	PLA	$15/kg	10 grams	4	$0.04
	Flexible 80A	$200/L	10 mL	1	$2
Labor	Prototyping Engineer (You!)	$20/hour	ZipRecruiter.com	3 hours	$60
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	Free	Harris County Public Library	1 hour tutorial ($20/hour from above)	$20
	Quality Control	$40/hour	Glassdoor.com	15 minutes	$10
TOTAL					$92.04