Week 5: 3D Printing and Scanning

Week 5: 3D Printing and Scanning

Testing the printers

To learn more about print tolerances, check out the group website

I went on to Thingiverse and chose the MICRO All In One 3D printer test as a print test. I printed the same model in the same size with 90% infill no supports, and semi-transparent PETG+ in different colors.

Each color represents was printed using a different printer and nozzle size.

Color	Printer	Nozzle Size
RED	Original Prusa MINI	.04 Nozzle
GREEN	Original Prusa MINI	.06 Nozzle
BLUE	Original Prusa i3 MK3S	.08 Nozzle

The creator of the test print has a many guides and a website to help you understand how the test works. Each part circled represents a different aspect that the print is testing. Depending on how the print fails, it can show you what setting you may need to change such as speed, temperature, and fan speed.

The yellow rectangle is the stringing test. stringing is the thin, hair-like strands left behind when the nozzle moves from one point to another.

Red has some minor stringing.

Green has major stringing.

Blue has even more stringing than green.

The green circle is testing how well your machine can print out a sharp spike.

Red did very well. Both spikes are sharp.

Green did okay. Both spike are both there but they are not sharp. Lots of stringing and globbing near the tips.

Blue had major stringing issues, but less globbing issues than green.

The black circles represent the overhang test. The overhang is tested from 10° to 80°, in 5 degree increments.

Red starts to fail at 75°.

Green starts to fail at 70°.

Blue starts to fail slightly at 20° and even more at 45°.

The purple circle is the bridging test. The bridging test is about learning how far your printer can make a line from one point to another without support. This tests bridge lengths of 2mm, 5mm, 10mm, 15mm, 29mm, and 25mm.

Red did fine aide from the stringing. the 25mm bridge had a burn on it and there was a glob between the 25mm and 20mm bridge.

Green also had stringing issues, but all the bridges worked perfectly.

Blue had major stringing issues to the point that the strings created a small wall. Most bridges were fine, but the 20mm and 25mm bridges drooped a little in the middle.

Testing Summary

	Red	Green	Blue
Stringing Test	Fail	Fail	Fail
Sharp Corners Test	Pass	Fail	Fail
Overhang Test	Fails at 75°	Fails at 70°	Fails at 20°
Bridging Test	Fails at 20mm	Pass	Fails at 20mm

Using FREECAD

I am still a beginner with 3D modeling, so I decided to make an egg shaker with egg shaker components.

The design is simple, I watched Lesson 10 from MangoJelllySoulutions to learn how to create round objects in FREEDCAD.

To make my egg shape, I used the B-Spline tool.

Click to create 3 points. The first at the green line, one to the bottom right, and the last at the green line below.

Next click “create line” and connect the top and bottom lines. It is important that there is a closed circuit. If you want to adjust the curve shape, you may click, hold, and drag the left point to adjust the shape.

Click “close” and enter the models section. Select your model and click “Revolve”

Congrats! You have a pointy egg!

I will be using this shape for both the shaker and the pellets that go inside.

PRUSA

All 3 ED Printers I used this week are from the brand PRUSA, so I used their software.

Download Prusa Connect

Under settings click “Advanced”. Make sure to go into the Printer settings and choose the correct printer. For the big egg use the PRUSA Mini .04 Nozzle.

“Import” the Egg model

You can scale the egg bigger or smaller with the “scale” tool. Once its the size you like, hit “Slice” on the bottom right.

Make sure that the infill, supports and filament type are correct. I used PETG filament. Each filament has a settings that work for them. I used the default.

To create a pause button, slide this button 1/4 of the way down. Next left click and click “Add Pause”. When the printer gets to this point, it will pause, allowing you to add things inside before continuing.

When you are all set, click “export”.

For the smaller eggs, scale them down using the method from before.

Next click on the small egg and copy and paste 2o times. The screen will only show 2 eggs, but if you look to the right you will see there are multiple egg objects that are sitting in the same spot. Select them all with CTRL + A.

Next click “Arrange”

The small eggs are ready to print! Click “Export”

3D Printing

An Important note about the 3d printer: it gets hot. like really hot. Hot enough to melt skin. BE CAREFUL when touching. The screen will display if the bed is still hot. You should wait for the bed to cool down before you attempt to remove your print.

I loaded the files on to a UB and plugged it into the 3D Printer.

Once I start the print it automatically starts leveling the board. This is to make sure the base layer and all layers after are even.

You must watch for the first 1 or 2 layers to makes sure that its printing correctly. Generally if the first two layers work, the rest will as well.

I ran the 2 prints at the same time. The small eggs finished first and I lightly bent the board to release them. This photo shows them printed with supports. This was a mistake, the supports were unnecessary and made removal more difficult..

next the big egg paused and i put the small eggs in. This is special because other manufacturing methods would have trouble being printed with objects inside of them.

once it was done the eggs were fully sealed inside! goodbye eggs!

the egg shaker is done! hooray!

CATS

I didn’t see Shadow much this week. Echo continues to be bold and hangs out on the ground floor now. He looks like a sweet prince on a pedestal.

Files

Egg Files!

Copyright 2026 - Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial

Source code hosted at gitlab.fabcloud.org