Now that I have my Cocoon Create 3D printer I can’t help but find new things to print for my bike! Since the bike is from 2007 the licence plate is a little bit shabby, so it seemed like a good chance to print a surround to tidy the edges up and also tie in with the other 3D prints I’ve done using this green PET+ material from MadeSolid. As you can see above, I chose to split the surround into 2 halves for printing, making it both easier to print (less chance for warping) and also easier to install. If you look at the Sketchfab 3D model below, you can see I designed a few hooks and details to secure around the licence plate, so being able to install it in 2 pieces made sense. There are 2 bolts used to secure the surround in place using existing holes on the licence plate, and the bottom split area was glued after being fitted for a seamless look.
While the final design works well, this one wasn’t all smooth sailing. The first print on the left in the image below didn’t quite fit onto the licence plate, so a few details needed to be changed in the Solidworks CAD model. The second partial print I tried printing vertically, rather than lying down, with the hope that it would require less support material. Unfortunately I had to stop this print as the surface details seemed to be getting worse as it printed, probably because of the height and inherent flexibility of the thin part the higher it got (a bit like a skyscraper swaying in the wind).
The third part pictured is the final successful part, printed lying down and using support material automatically generated in Cura (my slicing tool to generate the G-code for the printer) for the overhangs. While the visible surfaces look great, the detail picture on the right shows the messy underside surfaces which I’m not too happy about. This must be a setting in Cura that I’m missing and haven’t noticed in my previous prints on the Cocoon Create which have rarely required much, if any, support material. I’ll have to have a close look next time I print something requiring a lot of support like this – anyone have any ideas?
– Posted by James Novak
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