Objects n Things

The limitations for this print were pretty simple, after all the printer is printing with clay. This meant that the printer could only print nonstop, which meant the print had to be able to print without stopping. Plus clay doesn't dry immediately, so the material is soft and can't support steep angle or large drops because it will collapse. These limitations actually confined our model quite a bit as our original 3D model was heavily based on being able to print separate columns. This meant we would have to remake a completely new design. Given the limitations and the materials we all decided on a glass/mug. Something simple that's easily printable that also makes sense to be made out of clay. We threw up a quick couple designs in Rhino, and our whole group decided on one pretty quickly. It was simple yet elegant and made sense for the print. With everything set all we had to do was scale it and repair it for Bryan to slice. Now came the fun part. The printing proce...

The Gruelling Process I guess when we decided to hollow form 3D print a large chalice we should've expected to run into some issues. According to the 3D model and the dimensions, it should have printed just fine. Boy were we wrong. We followed all the standard slicing and modelling procedures in the book. The problem with the older Slic3r program is that it doesn't give a preview of the sliced object, it just shoots out a g-code. This means on the first try we didn't realize that Slic3r had written a strange g-code, as some random parts as well as the spindles were set to be printed solid, even with the hollow form configuration file loaded in. So when the printer reached the spindles it started printing them solid. The speed of the printer plus the excess material created by printing fully solid pieces meant the spindles were coming out melty and gross looking, something that clearly wasn't saveable by sanding or acetone.  In order to make sure that the chalice ...