Abstract2actual
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Gallery
  • Buy stuff
  • Contact
  • About

7 Day Challenge: A Doo-dad A Day

2/12/2015

0 Comments

 

Day 7: Ball in a cage

Picturenetfabb rendering of a ball in a cage
A friend suggested I print something that can only be mechanically produced on a 3d printer for my last day of the challenge.  I was thinking of some rather complex things, like an airplane in a hangar, but I had to go with something simpler because I am running short on time.  You see, I failed to take into account that I was going to be driving 7 hours after work yesterday.  Considering the late start, I picked a ball in a cage for today's project.
Designing this in Google SketchUp wasn't too difficult, although I did have to do a little research to figure out how to create a sphere.  Once I got that down, building the cage around it was pretty simple, just a bunch of straight lines and erasing a few planes that created themselves.  I had to add a frangible 3mm X .2mm thick circle at the bottom of the sphere to hold it to the print bed during printing, but being so thin, it will easily break away after printing is complete.


I originally designed this to be a 2.5cm (1 in.) sphere within a 2.5 cm square cage, but on the first print attempt, with my Airwolf 3D v5.5 printer, I saw that this was so small that the layers weren't cooling fast enough for the subsequent layer to form correctly.  In order to resolve this, I scaled it up 150% and added a second one to the print job.  This way, the layer on the first object has time to solidify as the layer on the second object is being printed.  
The only drawback is that it will take almost 4 hours to print, which will exceed the time limit I set for myself on the 7 day challenge.  Since I don't have a paycheck riding on this, I can live being a little late. ; )
2/12/2015  7:30pm
The print job completed at 7:15.  I had to do a little cleanup with a small file to remove strands from the overhangs and to remove the support disc off of the bottom of the ball.  They turned out really well.  I'll be making some adjustments to the print profile to get them to print a little cleaner in the future.
Picture
Cageball, mid way through the print job.
Picture
Cageball #Abstract2Actual 4:26
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    TJ Emsley

    Lifetime tinkerer.

    Archives

    October 2022
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    February 2018
    January 2018
    January 2017
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Categories

    All
    3d Design
    3d Printing
    Open Source

    RSS Feed




Proudly powered by Weebly