Month: December 2017

So. Printing a caulk rocket. As you can see it gets to the top and wiggles. Its in PLA printed at 200c. It was 205c and was a bit more wiggly at the top. Is it just too hot?

http://ift.tt/2BV42W6 http://ift.tt/2BEz9kT

My first time designing and printing a part. Presenting: The Nut Button.

Hello and Merry Christmas! As the title suggests, I designed and 3D printed my first part/assembly over the last few days using my brothers printer. I have previous experience with 3D modeling, however I had never designed a part specifically for 3D printing. The part I designed is a reference to the nut button meme, and I intend to wrap it up as a gift for a white elephant exchange with my friends.Software/Hardware:CAD: SolidWorks 2015Slicer: ideaMakerWeb interface: OctoPrint.com3D Printer: Tevo TornadoI iterated the design over time as learned from my prototypes, and about 3D prining in general. The final assembly looked like this in SolidWorks, and here is an exploded view with labels for each part. The button and bottom plate are designed to be inserted via the bottom of the housing, and then the bottom plate screws on to keep the assembly together. The spring I used was purchased from the local hardware store.ButtonThis part initially housed the stem that holds the spring in place aka the spring stem, because of that it was necessary to print this part upside down which resulted in a crappy finish for arguably the most import part of the build! To address this, I moved the stem to the bottom plate, and then extruded the bottom of the button down to be level with bottom of the stabilizing tabs. This allowed me to print the part face up, which resulted in a much better finish. After more than a little sanding it fits great! Comparison pics: top, bottom (side note, version 1.0 is missing the spring stem because I broke it off in order to get a working prototype).HousingProbably went the smoothest out of all of the parts, the only hiccup was that Octoprint’s servers went down when it 90% complete. Luckily it was far enough along to serve as a prototype to test the slip fit tolerances between it and the other two parts. The only change I made to the housing was adding a tab to each of the lips to serve as a hard stop for the bottom plate when it screws on.Bottom PlateThis little bastard went through the most changes. I never printed version 1.0, however version 2.0 saw the inclusion of the spring stem mentioned above. From 2.0 to 3.0 I added curved walls to decrease the amount that the button rocked back and forth, and also strengthened the catch tabs since one of them broke off when I was using a chisel to clean up the part after printing. The former worked great, the later not so much since the fill % hadn’t changed so it was still too weak and one of the catch tabs broke off again. An unintended consequence of adding the curved walls (and thus a lot of extra material) was that the part bowed because the thickness of the bottom plate was only .100 inch. I addressed these issues in 4.0 where I fixed the catch tab problem by increasing the fill from 10% to 20%, and I fixed the bowing issue by increasing the plate thickness from .100 inch to .250 inch.Final ResultOverall the button has a great tactile feel to it, and screwing and unscrewing the bottom plate is almost therapeutic because of how smooth and satisfying it feels. Here is the prototype and finished button side by side and also a teardown of the whole assembly including the spring. Meme gif. Bonus gif of the either version 3.0 or 4.0 of the bottom plate being printed.Conclusion:I learned a lot about designing parts specifically for 3D printing, from fill %’s to part orientation to fit tolerances. I still have a lot to learn but I definitely enjoyed myself and I’m eager for a new project. Thanks for reading, and I apologize in advance for any spelling/grammar errors.Edit: wrong picture. http://ift.tt/2CaKlca