5 - Additive Manufacturing
5 - 11 March 2020
Lessons by Mickey van Zeijl
👾 This week we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the 3D printer and additive manufacturing. The 3D printer was announced as a disruptive technology, but what does this mean and is this still the case? We will think and talk about our responsibilities as makers and the impact of making objects on people, society and the environment. Why and when should we use the 3D printer and for which types of products?
In pairs, you will design and print three different molds that can be used in the open material archive. The aim of these molds is to be able to reproduce material experiments with the same mold but different materials. These molds should create textual experiments for the casted material.
THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENTS
Assignment 0 - with the entire group
Produce a class zine on the RISO printer together, 2 people will be editors this week. Individual contributions in the form of zine spreads (minimum 150 words + original imagery).
Reflect on what your responsibilities are as a maker/designer for making objects and the impact they have on people, society and the environment. Create your own maker manifesto. Discuss how you used this in your making process this week, and how it’s (an aspect of) this week’s work.
Assignment 1 - individual
Document the in-class assignment on your gitbook documentation page, include the tips and tricks that helped you understand Fusion 360, Cura and the 3D-printer.
Write for each mold a tutorial with instructions. Include useful images with annotations to show each step of the design and print process. Another person should be able to follow your steps and reproduce your design.
Assignment 2 - in pairs
Design and print 3 different molds for the open material archive that can be used for casting material samples.
Requirements: all 4 parts should fit on the printing bed of the Ultimaker 2 (20 x 20 cm). So each part is about 8cm x 8cm, height can vary.
Mold 1 :
2.5D Metamold object, for flexible material texture. You will print the object itself and experiment with textures for the casted material. We will use the vacuum former to create mold of the mold.
Mold 2
2.5D Metamold for casting hard material texture. This metamold will be used to create a mold by casting flexible material to create the mold. This flexible mold will be used to cast a hard material.
Mold 3
3D mold (2 parts) of a (poly)spericon or other geometric object. The design should include an airhole and a pouring hole for casting. The design should include fixtures for exact part placement, or the two parts of the mold can be nested.
Understanding Fusion 360, Cura & the 3D printer
If you have never worked with these programmes before, please read my little tutorial:
pageUnderstanding Fusion 360pageUnderstanding CurapageUnderstanding the 3D PrinterThe molds
2D design
I started with my design and I wanted it to be simple and playful, so I added different dimensions with heights and depths.
We had normal white PLA material so we didn’t needed to change a lot of settings in Cura.
I thought I might needed support because of the heights and depths I created with this design, but the other team which we shared the printer with deleted the support at the end, but the result was perfect so I didn’t needed it after all. But what I did do was changing the speed of the printing machine to print the plastic slower, so the heights could be attached better.
But by night the printer had a meltdown or something and it all went wrong.
So we had to start over. The second time worked out and they came out perfectly!
3D Design
Anoush and I tried to design a 3D Mold but we couldn’t make it and because of the time shortage and everything failing we had to grab a nice file from the internet.
We chose a cute little robot with a letter M (maybe from Makers Lab) inside! How nice!
I uploaded the file in Fusion 360 and checked if the design made any sense and if there were any mistakes in it. But the design seemed fine.
We started looking for a nice PLA material to work with, but all the PLA materials were in use. So we took the PET material. The material has a really nice blue transparant color and is a little flexible if you have one line printed or a few lines printed.
We just uploaded the file with settings for PLA materials to the printer without any setting adjustments.
Well as you can guess it went completely wrong!
We asked some help from Kaj and another team who wanted to join us on the printer. We looked the material up on the internet and found out we had to change some settings for the PET material. In Cura you’ll have to set the settings for PLA (Because there are no PET settings) with a temperature advice of 200 to 230 degrees. And 30 to 70 degrees on the built plate. The ventilator has to be on for the fully 100% and the retraction has to be off. With a printing speed of 40 to 70 mm/s.
On the printer you’ll have to adjust some settings as well. We set the ground temperature around 60, print temperature around 215 degrees and a printing speed of 50 mm/s.
But here we had a problem with the printer as well.
It was the same night as the other mold and there was a power shortage and so the 3D printer crashed.
Now there was a huge time shortage and all the printers were taken... I had lost all my hope for finishing this assignment. My dear classmate Laura managed to get a printer and asked me if I wanted to print something! I was so happy with this opportunity! She took her own white PLA material to school and printed our last mold!
The end result is amazing! Everything fits perfectly into each other.
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