Ring Sizers

Ring Sizers
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11458
118min/1.81m/$0.74

I want to make rings as a project for my students so I dug up my old plastic ring sizer.  It was missing 2 rings so I looked up new ring sizers on Amazon.  The decent ones were like $15, less if it's plastic.  Then I realized I COULD PRINT MY OWN!!!!

On to Thingiverse and there they were!  Ring sizers!

Greatest 3D printing moment so far!

I loaded it up.  Tried blue tape + glue and then I heard things falling out of the printer.  Came to find this epic fail:

Cleaned it up a bit and added a raft. Worked out MUCH better, although I had to use a lot of material with the raft now.  But the rings work great and separate very well from the raft.

Megaman X - fail and fix

Megaman X - 150% scaled up

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1036748

503min/21.53m/$1.63

One of my students asked me to print this Megaman X figure.  It was small so I scaled it up so the details could show.  I also put the print quality to Fine so that the curves would come out nicer.

It took me 3 tries to get this right as demonstrated below.

1st try:  raft + supports, standard suppose from Flashrpint.  Failed because supports in both arms fell.

2nd try:  added custom supports to the Flashprint ones.  Left are OK, right arm fail as support broke.

3rd try:  went nuts with custom supports for the right arm.  SUCCESS!!!

The build time is pretty crazy.  Almost 10hrs!  This is easily the biggest print I've done.

Partway through I checked my 3rd print to see this and was relieved I finally got a good configuration to print.

OpenForge Rowboats (fail and fix)

OpenForge Rowboats for D&D

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:646788

Rowboat and 2 oars:

100min/6.49m/$0.49

I tried to make one set of medium sized rowboats with oars.  I didn't use a raft and naturally it came undone even on blue tape with glue.

So I added a raft, and it came out quite fine.

But I wanted a boat so that more characters could fit on it.  I uploaded the design into Tinkercad and then just scaled it to be bigger.  It was quite easy.  The limits of my Finder are 14cm x 14cm for the base so I made this reasonably big.

Realizing I would need a giant raft and I was worried that such a large flat print would lift and get ruined, I decided to re-orient the part so I could use supports instead of the huge raft.

It turned out really well even though some supports got screwed up!  Check out the dangling filament!

 And finally the true test is adding figures.  This one fits a party of 7.  Scaling is good stuff!

Open Forge Wood Floor - Failure and Fix

http://www.thingiverse.com/search/page:2?q=openforge&sa=

I wanted to try and do some modular flooring for D&D but the problem was that a print of just ONE floor tile would take over an hour!

So I took the file for the wood floor and modified it by chopping off the base to make it thinner, and thus take up less time and material.

I haven't had trouble with parts lifting so I did a batch and let it run over night.

Then I got my most glorious screw up ever:

So I tried a test with speed settings, dialing it down to see what would happen, and maybe it would stick better also with glue and tape.  Nope:

Tried speed setting again.  Nope:

Then I decided to try a raft with the part 1mm off the build plate and adding supports to hold it.

SUCCESS!  The supports and raft worked so there was no curling.

It actually turned out really well.

And here's the final product with the first disaster next to it.

Oddish Planter

Oddish Planter

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:738011

265min/16.31m/$1.24

This looked like a fun present for an Anime friend.

It printed out well.  I added supports and there were a lot between the legs, but they all came off really well!  It is a fun design and was easy to print, although it took over 4 hours.

 Lots of supports under neath the Oddish:

 Supports everywhere!

 But they come off easy.

Eclipse Board Game Cube Tray

Eclipse Board Game Cube Tray

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:500632

37min/2.41m/$0.18

I thought I'd save a bunch of time and print a set of Blue Lantern rings AND 2 Eclipse game trays.  The rings came out fine but the trays warped because the painter's tape did not stick to the brand new build plate surface (new build plate)!

 So I reprinted just the tray this time and just did it on top of a fresh build plate, no tape, no glue.  It worked great!  No lifting!

Here it is with cubes and on the game board.  Eclipse is an awesome game.  Takes forever to play, but still awesome and I can guarantee I'll probably not even play once this year.

Looking at the fit of the cubes, I measured the holes in the plate and cubes themselves.

Holes = 8.85mm

Cubes = 8.40mm

Very good tolerance and makes for an easy fit for the cubes!

Modified Dragon Skull

Originally from: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1378132

He has the link to his Tinkercad model which I copied to my own account and modified.

https://www.tinkercad.com/things/g3vCLebCM1f

I removed the spike in the middle of the mouth and then played with scale to make it longer.

224min/10.91m/$0.84

The print came out really well.  I oriented it veritcally so that the raft was on the base and the best details at the front of the dragon were faced up and not needing supports.

With all the supports off, it looks pretty good and will definitely be a centrepiece in my D&D games.

Witcher Medalion

Witcher Medalion
149min/7.3m/$0.55
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:982634

There are a bunch of Witcher medalion models on Thingiverse.  You should pick the one that has the best mounting for you.  There are ones that sit on stands or have loops for chains.  This one has a big loop in the back for a small chain.

It worked out really well, the details were sharp and I printed it with supports that were not too hard to remove.  A great print fresh off Thingiverse.

Iron Giant Bolt

Iron Giant Bolt

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1569466

3 parts

Top

258min/21.73m/$1.65

Cap

56min/4.18m/$0.32

Screw

386min/21m/$1.59

Batch of remaining parts

~60min/6.27m/$0.47

Total:  760min/53.18m/$4.02

One of my students really wanted this bolt from the movie Iron Giant.

It looked pretty daunting with all those curves and overhangs but I thought it would be a good test for the new printer.

The model comes in 3 pieces.  Make sure you add your rafts and supports for these!

 After about a day of printing, all the parts were done and come out quite nicely!

It is quite a beautiful piece straight out of Thingiverse.  My student wants to paint it but I think it looks good just the way it is!

T-Rex Skull

T-Rex Skull

208min/11.34m/$0.86

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:275091

I started the T-Rex skeleton that just got released by Makerbot on Thingiverse.

First I did the skull.  I used FlashPrint to import both the bottom jaw and skull files together so that it was one print.  As you can see, it turned out pretty well!

There are quite a bit of supports, and getting them out of the teeth and inside the skull have to be done with care but it is worth it!

Owl Statue

Owl Statue
171min/12.04m/$0.91
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18218/#files

So I've been having troubles with birds building nests in the back porch roof and recently I had to evict a robin's freshly made nest twice.  I thought about building anti-bird spikes but then I remembered that most birds stay away from owls or predatory birds.

So I found this design on Thingiverse by Cushwa and it is an amazing model.

It is bigger than the Finder's 14cm printable box so you'll have to scale it down.  I went to 90% and it fit.

What's interesting to note is the discrepancy between what FlashPrint says something will take versus the actual time.  Flashprint said 171min.  Actual was 197.  That's about 15% more time than quoted.  I'll keep track of this and post how much it is always off but it is something I noticed before.

The print came out really well and I was quite pleased with it.  I used rafts and supports, plus played with Flashprint to make the inside hollow by setting the fill density to 0% as shown below.

There weren't any problems with it except maybe some little bits of singed filament on the insid e as it was printing.  The raft this time came off surprisingly easily as I have had much trouble with rafts in the past  I think it's because it was such a large object.

To make it a bit more menacing, I took a sharpie and colored in the eyes and outlined a few of the features like feathers, wings, and eyebrows.  I took some duct tape and secured it right next to where the nests were being made.  No lets see what happens!  If I remember I'll post an update here later on this year!

Gear Cube - Different Colors

Screwless Cube Gears

3 prints

Screwless-Cube-Plate2.stl
120min / 5.08m / $0.38

Screwless-Cube-Plate1.stl
126min/8.62m/$0.65

Screwless-Cube-Plate1.stl (need to do this one twice)
126min/8.62m/$0.65

Total for Gear Cube on Flashforge Finder:
272min / 22.52m / $1.68

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10483

As I gain confidence, I'm now experimenting with different colors.

I'm trying out the Wanhao clear blue and clear red to make a gear cube.

I'll post a pic when it is completely done but both colors look amazing.

Yoda Buddha

Yoda Buddha
271min/23.73m/$1.80
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1092181

A friend of mine requested this a long time ago but it would have costed a lot to do in ABS.
$1.80 is amazing.
For this one I added supports using FlashPrint so it was a good test of overhangs and doing a larger object than figures.  I used the blue tape/glue stick combo for this one, but I also tested another feature in the Finder:

Auto Shut Off When Finished

When your object is printing, in the bottom right there is the wrench/screwdriver symbol for options.  Press that

Now just click on Finish-Shutdown and the Finder will power off when it is done the print!  This was awesome because I can now print before I go to sleep! (Make sure you have adequately working fire alarms because you never know!)

So this morning I woke up and got this out of the print.  The supports came off quite easily and didn't merge like in my previous experiences.

With all the supports off, it's actually an awesome print!  Just be gentle around the ears!

Be gentle around the ears should you!