assignment:

  • group assignment:
    • - test the design rules for your 3D printer(s)
  • individual assignment:
  • design and 3D print an object (small, few cm3, limited by printer time) that could not be made subtractively
  • 3D scan an object (and optionally print it)

    • 3D Scanning and Printing

    Group assignment: Design rules for our 3D printer

    Rules

    The calibrations of the 3D printer was a must to understand first

    from printing several objects and having had colibrated printer for a while i came up with 3 major rules of thumb to consider:

  • Overhangs: Avoid overhangs in your design when possible
  • Warping: Avoid large flat surfaces and use rounded corners to avoid warping.
  • Level of detail: Decide what is the minimum level of detail your models require and choose a 3D printing process accordingly.

    • Here is a photo of major rules of 3D printing to consider

    I wanted to understand the feel of the user, and how fast can it brake before the user calls in for fixing.

  • being that the printer is made by me i honestly didnot have many rules on how the printer should be used rather i wanted it to be used by many other people for me to understand the user experience and how interactive i should make it since and using all open source software.

    • that is some problem we had with z-axis movement with the extruder being heavy and we had to come up with the counter weight for. Still collecting some more insight on it

    Machines in use

    The printer used in made here from the lab we have not named them yet

    the scanner used is Nextengine 3D scanner

    Individual Assignment

    3D printing

    Using solid works i decided to start by designing an object that i intended to print

    I decided to go with earphone holder or rather a storage for my earphones that would look something like this

    After some time this is what i came up with through solidworks design

    I decided to use my own made 3D printer which i have in the lab couse i felt its faster compared to the UPrint 3D printer.

    UPrint

    The final printed object looked this, i used repetier host to do my slicing to get my g-code coordinates

    the printed casing is as follows

    trial one

    severing its purpose

    i went right ahead to play with so many designed and to play with the designs that i came across in some designed myself and others downloading from thingiverse as well as grabcad. Some are as follows

    Printer Calibration

    In my printers, i did the following calibration:

  • z-axis calibration
    • this appeared during initial connectio and one side of the z-axis was higher or lower than the other
  • Too much extrusion from extruder
    • this was due to temperature setting of the printer and this might Uzzing and too much heat. thus the idea was to use correct heat setting for different materials
  • Bed leveling
    • One of the most important parts to calibrate in a 3D printer is the base or bed, because if it isn´t well leveled, you will not get good printing results.This bed calibration process, depending on the 3D printer model, can be in the following ways: Auto leveling assisted, Some 3D printers have this system, which consists of a height adjustment by turning the screws of the base and with the help leds that have the own 3D printer, which change color red to green at the right height. Manual leveling: Adjust the leveling of the bed by turning the screws of the bed itself on which most of my 3D printers have.

    3D Scanning

    being a fun of shreck while i was a kid i found one of many toys in my archieve box and decided to scan it using the scanner

    The set up was as follows

    the image was captured well and it was ready to print

    the final object was as follows

    i decided to go right ahead and print the obtained object using the printed and this were results

    More to the lab we use recycled bottles to make our own printing materials,PET

    We collect the bottles from vendures of soda,waters and juices. Sometimes we buy per kilo from the guys who collect for us to appriciate.

    after collection we use the following machine to chop the plastics to small pieces

    those are the small pieces that are later melted

    Then using machine below melt and extrude and produce the filament

    all this is usually done in the lab for more information

  • https://github.com/TechforTrade/Thunderhead-Filament-Extruder/wiki

    • the reason for developing the machine is because buying the filament in kenya is so expensive, around KSH.4000 to KSH.6000. by doing this we reduce the cost for this by big murgin and furthermore we encourage the recycling

    you can get the files here

    Design File

    Problem faced

  • power outage in the lab kept us repeating the work over and over many times i had to start from the beginning
  • my printers have no auto resume capabilities thus when power out-age
  • Interfearence from external sources causing the movement of scanned object
  • there is alot of calibration of the my 3D printer used at the lab, thus abit of waste of time.

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