Before we were assigned this homework, I already knew, from looking at previous semester’s gumballs, that I wanted to 3-D print an animal that articulated in some way. So I scoured thingiverse, and found an Articulated Mouse. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was the one.

After downloading the .stl file, I set-up my first print using the Bambu printer (FDM). The aim was to make the mouse as big as possible, but still fit in the gumball, so I tested out 3 different scaled sizes. The 3 sizes I tried were 70%, 50% and 30% of the original scale.

Here are the 3 sizes of my mice printing in the Bambu printer using the White Basic PLA:

It’s a little hard to tell in the picture above, but there were some brim supports present around the mice. Once I took the completed prints off the printer, I had lots of difficulty removing the support material from the tail of mouse at 30% scale. The interlocking tail pieces were so tiny and very fragile, and because it was so small, it had trouble articulating, and tragically broke.

These are the 2 mice scaled at 50% and 70%, with all the support material removed:

I tested both in the gumball, and the 70% scaled mouse was a perfect fit!

So I proceeded to the next 3D printing method, SLA/Resin, using the 70% scale. I similarly set up the SLA printer with the same .stl file, and used the Clear Resin to create my mouse. As I took the mouse off the Formlabs printer when the print was complete, I was eager to see if the tail would articulate. Sadly, the tail pieces were fused together and extremely rigid, with no hope of articulating. Even though the pieces were seemingly fused, I wanted to see if there was any give or potential for movement. In exploring this, I broke the tail in half. Unfortunately, there was no potential for much movement, and SLA was determined to be a poor method for printing this piece.

I still cured the piece, where you can see evidence of the broken tail (the mouse with broken tail is the piece in the back):

Since I still needed another process/printer to complete the assignment. I turned to the Prusa, which similar to the Bambu printer, used FDM. I had confidence that this method would work well for printing my articulating mouse.

So I set the Prusa to work, again using the same White Basic PLA material. After a few unsuccessful attempts (one time the printer ran out of material, and the second time the SD was removed from the printer before the print was complete), it finally finished!

The prints that came out of the Bambu printer and Prusa look fairly identical. So, after removing the support material, I popped them in the gumball capsules with their printed out link for reference.

Here are pictures of my clean workspaces:

 

Cost Analysis:

Type	Item	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	PLA Filament (White)	$14.99	Amazon	1 kg (bundle)	$14.99
	Clear Resin	$79	FormLabs	1 L	$79
Labor	3D printer Operator	$23/hr	ZipRecruiter	1 hr	$23
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	$20/day	FatLlama	2 days	$40
Final Cost					$156.99