My first 3D print

The printer I used was Prusa M4KS and as software for slicing the model I used PrusaSlicer 2.9.4 So I began by downloading the software, opened it and went through the initial set up.

These are the printers that I chose for now to use on my computer. Additionally, a SLA printer was tested on another computer.

Clicked None on the right and then selected which printers I expect to use. Following instructions I selected Creality, Prusa, and Ultimaker, and selected a few printers from those manufacturers, specifically Prusa M4KS which I was going to use now. For filament I selected generic PLA and Generic PTEG. These settings can be edited in the drop down menus on the right -> Add/Remove filaments/printers

I wanted to print a phone stand to help in filming my documentation with my phone (freeing my both hands for demonstrating), so I searched for a one in Thingiverse and downloaded this one which was small enough to be printed quickly enough, 22 minutes to be exact (preference for this task was 10min).

I opened the file with Prusa Slicer, and clicked Slice. Slicing means that the 3D model is sliced into many “2D” -layers that are stacked on top of each other and have X and Y coordinates, which the printer understand. Then I examined how the print is going to be printed with the sliders, one layer on horizontal slider and multiple layers on the vertical slider (in video below I grabbed a wrong handle at first and moved up only one layer).

Then I clicked Export G—code at the bottom right and saved it on a flash drive that I had taken from the 3D printer, and then plugged it back in the printer.

Before starting to print, I realised that the filament was running out, and received some guidance from a class mate on how to change it. It was quite straightforward: in the main menu press Filament and then Change filament (alternatively first Unload and after that Load). Then wait for the nozzle to heat up so the filament can be removed by pulling it out. Then we added new roll of PLA filament above the printer, cut the twisted parts away and pushed the head of the filament in the nozzle. It didn’t go too far in it to be enough. Chose PLA and affirmed the load. The nozzle purged a bit of the new filament, and it is good idea to purge a bit more to ensure the readiness for the print.

Then I was ready to go on with the printing... Pressed Print in the main menu and selected my file from the list, and then pressed Print. Printed started to print and 25 minutes later I came to see the outcome which was a success and works as it’s supposed to.

3D printing tests

Overhang and bridging

First we did overhang test, which I downloaded from this week's lecture material and imported on PrusaSlicer.

In the settings on the right I chose the speed, material, the printer and selected None for supports (as this is a test for not using supports). This also raised a warning about print stability (second image).

Then I exported the G-code in to the Flash stick, sticked it into the printer and pressed print. I did the same procdeure for the bridging test (downloaded from the lecture materials)

Examining the construction of the print with the sliders, there can be seen on different color the specific parts of the print. On the second image in blue is the actual subject of these tests: the overhang perimeter.

And here are the printing and results for these tests. The bridging has surprisingly clean outcome.

Print with multiple colors

Then we did a The jolly 3D printing torture-test by CreativeTools.se, which was done with Prusa MK4S MMU to allow multiple colors (many rolls of filament on the image below).

So I downloaded the files and opened with PrusaSlicer those files that had multi-part and single in their name. I changed the unit of measure from inches to millimiters by clicking yes to the prompt and accepted that the files are considered as one object consisting of multiple parts. I removed the extra part that opened along with the files. I chose the right printer from the drop down menu and selected the colors in the software to correspond the color in the printer.

Sliced and imported the G-code to a flash drive which I then sticked to the printer. As in the image below, I was able to see the colors in their place and a model of the upcoming print. Then I hit print and left it to materialize for about 7 hours, and came to collect it after the weekend.

In the last image there can be seen the block that the printer created as every time it changed a color/filament, it sprouted the previous color out of the tubes/nozzle. It might have changed colors multiple times per layer so there's a lot of extra PLA being used in the printing process.

Test with SLA

Stereolithography allows a fascinating way for additive manufacturing.

We did a wall thickness test with the SLA printer and here's the process described. The Printer was Formlabs From 3 SLA 3D Printer. Gloves need to be used when in contact with the machine and its parts. The machine works with Wifi connection and here we have their IP-addresses printed in the front of each machine which need to be selected from the computer. Check that there

The first thing was to open the ventilation hole at the back of the printer.

We selected the material as white in Formlabs menu and opened the file. The model was rotated so that there's a minimal small part of it touching the platform and proper support were selectd on the Supports tab. Similar ooutcome was also achieved with One-Click Setup (last image)

As the supports were in place we were ready to start printing.

As printing was finished (after the weekend), became the time for post-processing which is more demanding than with FFF (if done any). Begin by taking gloves (this is more important than caring about creating waste). You don’t want the liquid resin to touch anything non-disposable. Then close the ventilation above the cartridge on the top back of the printer.

Then open the orange lid, lift the handle above the platform to release the lock, hold the handle around the lock handle and pull the platform out while as soon as possible turn around thew platform to avoid splashing any of the liquid resin on the platform or the print.

Take the terminal to a place for cleaning it up properly. Here we had a specific holder for the platform.

Use a tool to detach the print on a paper and put it in the grill of the cleaning machine, where the print soakes in isopropyl alcohol, and then choose the time for soak (10min ok) and press start. After ten minutes the print pops out and is still left to dry up for about 15 minutes. Let the print dry up so the surface finishes nicely. There is still some liquid resin (although diluted) on the print so do not touch it by hand.

Then clean up the printer platform. Spill generously isopropyl alcohol on the platform, swipe it up, and repeat until the whole platform is clean from resin all around. Again do not worry for creating too much waste but use as much paper as needed. Then you can put the platform back in the printer, press down the lock handle, and close the lid. The machine asks if the print came out clean: press yes and proceed to the main menu.

Then it was time for curing the print. The isopropyl has removed most of the liquid resin from the surface, but there is still some left, probably diluted in the isopropyl, so take new gloves (or use tweezers) and move the print to the curing station. Curing solidifies all the resin with light and heat. We let the support system of the print in its place during the curing, but it could also be removed at this point to enhance the final surface, but that would be more hazardous regarding the resin and removal of the supports. We set the temperature to 60 degrees and time for 30 minutes. These values vary between printing materials and can be checked in the formlabs website. Then pressed start (and began documenting all this).

And here's the final print after the curing. Three of the smallest holes are stuffed with the resin so smallest width you can use with this printer is 0.4mm. Two of the smallest "walls" are quite loose and flex easily if touched but do not break down.

Learnings from the tests

The tests showed the rather obvious fact that I cannot print in the air without support systems. However, it was surprisingly possible: PLA material is quite sticky and it was possible to build relatively long bridges without very visible malformation, as seen in the video above. This was not the case with overhangs, the material quite soon starts to sag down. Also the support system are not always very optimal as they are somewhat tedious to remove and leaves small marks on the print that need post-processing. There is this video on ways to go around the need for supports. The surface with FFF/PLA is not very clean in any case. Also the tests with SLA printer showed that making thin holes is much more difficult than making "walls" of the same thickness. The material, even with SLA was sticky enough to fill up small slots and holes.

In addition to these test learnings, I learned the processes and workflows of working with three different types of printers (as documented above) well enough to use them independently in the future

3D Scanning

We scanned someone's brain left in the lab. This was done using Artec Leo 3D scanner with a price tag of modest 35k! (compared to for example Creality Ferret that costs few hundreds). Artec Leo has a flash, two cameras and runs a computer vision algorithms. It can scan from 0.1mm up to 30m object sizes. In addition to the scanner, the accompanying software is also relevant when choosing the scanner.

We selected a new project and set resolution to normal. Then just hit the trigger once. The scanner was kept on unchanging distance as the it was moved around the brain, so that the image on the screen turned to green, meaning that that particular spot was properly scanned. Then hitting the trigger again finishes the scanning.

As the whole brain on the screen was turned to green, we plugged the scanner into a computer with ethernet cable and named the new scan on the device.

The device was made into a DHCP server by going into Settings -> Connect to Leo -> Wired (DHCP Server): Enable, and ultimately ethernet was being enabled (there was some problems that I wasn't able to fully follow).

Then we opened Artec Studio 16, imported a new project and there was the model of the brain on the computer screen.

Then we began editing the model. First we erased onnecessray parts with the eraser tool. We chose base selection and painted the base (with Ctrl + left click) so that the software was able to recognize it and remove it

Applied tools such as outlier removal (run global), fast fusion, small objects filter, hole fitting , isometric refresh, fixing the holes (press Tab and select holes to fill them), and mesh simplification (more polygons, more detail, 500 good enough). Also the texture was finished here.

As the model was complete, we imported it as a mesh which was then opened with Blender. .Stl-files are good for 3D printing but .obj-files also include the texture for processing that can handle it.

Printing my own design

We played with my child in the weekend with traditional russian doll (matryoshka), where I got the idea for printing an object that couldn't be laser cut. After thinking about creative angles for approaching a creation of a russian doll, I asked Leo Ai what creatures have layers but didn't lead to far. Then I asked more straight question of what funny ways there are to create russian dolls and there was a couple of interesting ones. First idea was to create a Russian doll of Russian presidents/leaders since Lenin to represent the Russian/Soviet political history that has been built on the previous one. Those are for sale on the internet and likely in Russia as well but the faces of the presidents are printed on the dolls.

Another idea was creating russian dolls out of babushka cat, a meme of a cat with a scarf on it's head looking cute/funny.

The point is to try to print them already in their nested positions so that it wouldn't be possible to make the subractively.

Now later as I look at the Fabacademy assessment page, this does not qualify as a design that can't be made subtractively as it can be disassembled. :/
I need to begin to check the assessment page before starting anything. This far I've remembered it only until I've finalized documentation and I need to check if I've documented everything expected. (The fabacademy website still confuses me a lot and I find it difficult to navigate without getting overwhelmed by all the links and paths that are just listed there and there's is so much and totally new things to cover in any case.)

Claude-Blender-MCP

To try a shortcut with designing the model for print, and inspired by the AI recitation, I decided to try out connecting Claude to Blender using MCP and create my rather complex idea for a print with that. I followed Pablo's great documentation and a little bit of this medium article. Creating the connection between Blender and Claude was surprisingly simple.

For the first idea, Claude refused to print Vladimir Putin, or any real public figure whatsoever as it could be used in misleading or disrespectful ways. I had also thought about the political correctedness of the idea so I didn't mind leaving the idea. After seeing the latter idea coming into (digital) reality, this would have been way too difficult task for Claude. I'm not sure if it is feasible at all.

I did multiple iterations in Claude-Blender-MCP style and took a few screenshots. It took Claude a few minutes to make the models, of which none of them wouldn't have really worked as a matryoshka, usually because of the thin connection between head-torso. It wasn't able to fix it although prompted for doing so. I wish I had saved each iteration in separate files as there was on somewhat potential design.

This one was probably the first design after a prompt "Can you create me a design of a Russian doll that resembles a babushka cat (as the meme goes) with five nested layers?" On the left Claude lists what has been included in the design.

This was the second one as I asked for larger ears and more cat like face. Also a fit-snap mechanism for the lower and upper parts of the body. I also asked for an alternative design where the scarf covers the whole head. This one was most close to fit as nested inside each other.

Here I asked to make it resemble more of a actual matryoshka and put the parts inside each other and the outcome was this.

After spending some time with this, mostly waiting for Claude to finish, I decided that I wont probably get a design to 3D print. The process might have also failed because of my prompting: this idea was rather difficult to describe and put into prompts.

In the next day I realized I hadn't had the "Use assets from Poly Haven" checked in Blended's MCP-menu which would probably make a change in the quality. I didn't know what that is but now I know that it is a public 3D asset library. I tried checking that box and try again. Claude was checking and searching Poly Haven assets for 10-15 minutes and finally there was a message that "Claude's response could not be fully generated" and I wanted to to continue creating the 3D model to print.

Russian doll with Blender

I searched youtube for a Blender tutorial for how to make a russian doll and found this one by PIXXO 3D and began working on that. Maybe I can add cat ears later to have at least a slight twist to the original one.

So I created a cylinder by pressing Shift + A -> Mesh -> Cylinder and downloaded the model jpg for the doll from here as instructed. I wasn't able to add the image just by dragging, as it created only a single-plane image, so I added it from Shift + A -> Image -> Reference and selected the right image. Now I was able to move around in "space" and the image would not disappear. I pressed G to move it to the right spot and scaled it up to approximately match the cylinder by pressing S. I didn't add plywood texture because I wasn't making an animation as in the tutorial.

I toggled the X-ray view so that the cylinder became transparent. Then I selected the top points in the cylinder and moved (G) them slightly down and selected the bottom points and scaled (S) them to match the image.

Still the bottom points selected, pressed E to extrude and Z to allow horizontal movement. Made it again match the image. Then had the mouse there on the recent extrusion and pressed Cmd + R and scrolled the mouse to create two more lines, double right-clicked them and pressed S and Z to scale them further away from each other, and S to scale the middle of the pedestal out.

Then moved mouse over the body and with Cmd + R added more lines which I slightly scaled (S). Then continued up from the middle with extrusion (E) and scaling (S) until the whole image was "covered".

Then toggled the x-ray mode off, switched to object mode, and by right-clicking the object selected Shade smooth to smoothen up the (horixzontal) edges.

Back in edit mode, selected the middle edge and with Cmd + B I duplicated it and with X and selecting faces I deleted the space between them. Then from Modifiers (the wrench icon) on the left -> Add Modifiers -> Generate -> Solidify. Adjusted thickness aptly.

At this point I realized that my matryoshka was 4.8 meter tall and I went to adjust the dimensions to the Object mode and pressed N. I set the height to 0.1m (10cm), which I then canceled as the doll became too small to operate with.

In the object mode I clicked Apply in the modifier tab. Then pressed Z and chose solid to see the object in two parts. In edit mode, selected one vertice and pressed Cmd + L to select all of them, then G to select all of them in the upper part. Then using Cmd + R and clicking on the thin bottom area I splitted it in two and extruded (E) the inner half. I did the same for the bottom part except extruded the outer area.

Then having one doll ready I duplicated it (Cmd + D) and scaled (S) to 75%. Then did the same for the smaller one and repeated two more times to get 4 layers of dolls. The first image is the first version and the second was modified after visiting prusaSlicer with the first one.

Then I exported the file as STL, opened PrusaSlicer and imported the file there. It appeared there really tiny so I scaled it up in PrusaSlicer by 1500% for the height to be about 7.2cm. I also set support settings to everywhere to allow Prusa to do what is necessary to print this nested thing.

I realized that there is not likely enough space between the upper and lower parts, so I went back to Blender, Cmd + Z back to the only one "doll", moved (G) the upper part slightly up, and did the duplications, exprting to STL and importing to PrusaSlicer. Now it imported larger so I scaled it down to 6,2cm and sliced it.

I asked Kris to check the print before beginning it, and it appeared that there should be support structures visible in PrusaSlicer so we went to Print Settings -> Support material tab -> in Style selected Organic, and now the support structure was visible. We also made it back to 100% size so height around 12cm. I hadn't really thought about that 2cm size of the smallest doll was really small, especially regarding the gap between upper and bottom parts.

Here's the difference between no support and support. The supports ended up being over 30% of the used material.

Here are the final settings and proportions of the used material.

The print time was estimated to be 3h50min. Looking at the early print, I began to doubt if I can break the supports without breaking the whole thing. I probably should have made the dolls thicker, I had just adjusted the thickness roughly without thinking about it.

And as I thought, the print didn't as supposed to. What I didin't expect that the printer won't finish the print, because the largest top part detached from the whole and began wobbling around the nozzle,ruining the print. Also the assembly didn't work as the dolls were too thin and the snap-fit mechanism even thinner. I feel a bit stupid not thinking it through properly before starting the printing (I was busy getting this done before the regional review and lecture).
These videos show what went wrong and how.

Now I know more about the material, its limits and what to take into account (at least some of the things) when designing 3D prints.