5 | Additive Manufacturing

Zine

Assignment

Two 2,5D molds and one 3D mold manufactured by a 3D printer.

Concept

First we're thinking about making a mold with a pattern. We were looking for patterns on Pinterest to inspire us, we saw a lot of fur patterns of tigers and panthers. That's when we came with the idea to make it more like a (fake) animal rug, to make the 3D print a bit more interesting. In the results trying to find a (fake) animal rug we saw a picture a rug of the parts of a crocodile that are above the water surface, so it looks like there's a crocodile swimming in the living room floor. That sparked the idea of our whole concept of building three different designs for every mold. A mold for a crocodile skeleton/fossil, a swimming crocodile and the eye of a crocodile.

At first we wanted to make a crocodile's body instead of only the eye, but making a mold for this would be pretty hard to extract the crocodile out of the mold. So we sticked with an eye, the rest of the molds were challenging enough to make since it's the first time 3D modeling in Fusion.

3D modeling in Fusion

2,5D mold — Crocodile fossil

Together with Sander, from the Makerslab, I spent at least an hour looking for a replacement for the sculpt tool. The sculpt tool was very useful for extruding shapes, but then you have the option to adjust the shape yourself how you want it. It is very similar to claying.

After spending a lot of time making the mold, and spending a lot of time in the sweep tool, I found the new version of the sculpt tool. The tool is not called Create Form. Very frustrating to find out just when you are ready.

3D mold — Crocodile eye

3D printing

2,5D mold — Crocodile fossil

While the 3D printer was busy printing my second mold, I realized that I had not made any oblique surfaces on the sides of the box. Fortunately, I only made the sides of the box 1 millimeter thick, so the sides could still give a little.

2MB

2.5D_croc_fossil_mold v1.stl

Because there are three 3D printers in the Makerslab, you had to fine-tune when which two will 3D print. For this reason, the 2.5D molds of Andrei and me were printed together with the 2.5D molds of Desiree and Thijs. Desiree was the first of us to be at school that day and sent our molds to the 3D printer.

3D mold — Crocodile eye

Exporting mold

From Fusion 360 we exported the 3D model as two separate .stl files. This allowed us to place the models in Cura the way we wanted to print them. For these models, the ideal plane to 3D print from is the largest flat plane.

3D printing mold

Because the filament was tangled, we stopped printing. Actually, this was a kind of luck in an accident. With the first settings, the molds would jointly take around 36 hours to 3D print. Because we thought it was really crazy that it took so long, we looked at the settings together and made some adjustments, after which Ultimaker Cura indicated that printing with these settings would take about 13 hours.

This was beneficial for both the amount of material used and the time it took to print. That does not mean that the quality of the 3D models is slightly less, but in this case it does not matter. So keep that in mind if you want a neatly finished 3D model.

3D printing tips

Make sure the filament isn't stuck, like for instance in a knot
Check how much filament you need, so it doesn't run out of filament. The 3D printer will continue even without filament, so you won't be able to start where at the point that it ran out of filament.
Make sure the plate is stuck in its place. Otherwise it will move and it won't look nothing near the 3D model you made.