3D Printed Assemblies

One of the most interesting features of 3D printing is that it’s possible to print multiple parts in their assembled state, reducing the need to bring together a whole range of different pieces and assemble them using screws, snaps, glue etc. While this is normally easier using the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process, with a bit of experience and some clever design skills, it’s possible to 3D print moving assemblies on a basic desktop FDM machine.

Pictured above are 2 objects I’ve been wanting to 3D print for a long time as great examples of what can be done with an FDM machine. The first is called an Air Spinner and is free to download from Thingiverse. Due to the tolerances and angles between each part, no support material is needed, and you can literally start spinning each of the pieces straight off the printer, functioning like a gyroscope. A nice quick print, and a great demo piece. Below is a video I found of someone printing and spinning one so you can get the full effect.

The second print pictured to the right is a Planetary Gear Keychain, also free to download from Thingiverse. This one is much more of a test of your printer’s settings, the first time I printed it all of the pieces were completely fused together and impossible to free. Even this print required a knife to separate pieces that formed part of the first layer, with the squished plastic bonding them together as my nozzle was slightly too close to the print plate. This one is remixed from another design on Thingiverse which I recommend you check out for all the instructions to help get the best result, and read how other people achieved successful prints. Here’s a short video to see the planetary gears in action

If you’re looking for some fun prints to share with people, these 2 are very much recommended and relatively quick, although I’m still a very big fan of the Kobayashi fidget cube from one of my previous posts whichis another great assembled object. If you’ve got a favourite 3D printable assembly, leave me a comment/link below and I might add it to my list of things to make!

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Ninjaflex – First Test

I’m sure if you’ve been 3D printing for even a short time, you’ve heard of Ninjaflex – a brand of flexible filament for your FDM printer that has rubber-like properties, rather than the usual rigid plastic parts that are more common with ABS or PLA filaments. While I’ve known about them for many years, I’ve never risked clogging my printer after hearing some bad experiences with these softer materials. Until this week!

I’m currently working with fashion postdoctoral researcher Mark Liu, who purchased a Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2.1 for some of our research – not coincidentally, it’s identical to my home Cocoon Create 3D printer. We decided to give the Ninjaflex a go to see if it would print, and if so, what sort of quality we could get since the printer and replacement parts are cheap if we really screwed up! Photographed above is one of our first successful prints, although the truth is we had quite a few failed attempts getting to this point as we experimented with settings and carefully watched each print. The primary settings we are using for these first tests (based off the recommended settings for Ninjaflex which are available in the Printing Guidelines) are:

• Extruder Temperature: 230°C
• Build Plate Temperature: 40°C
• Print Speed: 15mm/s
• Layer height: 0.2mm
• Retraction: 5mm (I think this is too much and we will try 0mm or 1mm)

These may not be perfect yet, and I’m keen for anyone’s feedback on what’s led to more successful prints with these soft filaments. The main thing we’ve noticed is that the soft filament is challenging for the extruder to push down into the nozzle and force out the tip – it is quite common for the nozzle to clog and filament to keep feeding through until it comes out the back of the extruder. Luckily nothing has jammed up yet, you can pull the filament back up out of the extruder and try again. With a bit of a search online, it seems that some 3D printable parts may solve this problem, in particular this modified Extruder Drive Block available on Thingiverse which closes the opening where the filament likes to escape, and will hopefully better force it down through the nozzle. The video below from Wanhao USA helps highlight the problem, and how this 3D printed part can fix it.

It’s early days with this filament, and I know the stock extruder of the Duplicator i3 is really not optimised for this type of material. But it can be done, and I’m sure with some tweaking can be made more reliable. Stay tuned as I am currently printing the new block to install on the Duplicator in the coming days, and will report back with results.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Desk Logo

Being surrounded by 3D prints and various design projects keeps me creative and inspired, and last year I shared my 3D printed “edditive” logo which features in both my home and work offices. Naturally, when my partner started her own design business called Tropicallday, I had to modify the design for her, and here is the result!

This is a very simple design that anyone could make with the most basic 3D CAD software skill. I created it in Solidworks, however it could easily be created in free software like Tinkercad, with each letter being extruded a slightly different distance, and merged together to form a single object. The final step in this process is to slice the bottom of the text on an angle, so that it tilts towards the viewer – it’s not as obvious in this photo, but you can see what I mean in the edditive print.

A fun little CAD and 3D print project, if you make one yourself, share a photo here on my blog 🙂

– Posted by James Novak

Oh That’s Handy – 3D Printed Prosthetic

If you’ve been paying any attention to 3D printing over recent years, no doubt you’ve seen at least a few 3D printed prosthetics. From the Iron Man prosthetic arm to the prosthetics being 3D printed for our animal friends, 3D printing is ushering in a new generation of low-cost, customisable prosthetics. Perhaps you’ve even seen my build of the fully robotic InMoov hand which has been documented on this blog.

At the extremely affordable end of the spectrum for humans, Enabling the Future (also called e-NABLE) is one of the most well-known names, developing a range of  open source prosthetics since 2013, which can be freely downloaded, printed, assembled and sent off to those in need. As part of my research I have wanted to build one of the e-NABLE hands for a while now to understand more about them, particularly in comparison to the more complex InMoov robot arm. As pictured above, I’ve finally got around to printing the Phoenix v2 hand, which is wrist actuated to open/close the fingers.

When you look at all the details, it really is a clever design which is optimised for 3D printing on a desktop FDM machine, with almost no support material or waste, and tolerances that fit really well together. Anyone with a 3D printer could assemble one of these, most of the non-3D printed parts can be sourced at a local hardware store or found in your shed (screws and fishing line). The instructions are very clear, and there are loads of videos to help demonstrate the assembly process and how some of the technical aspects of the hand work. Because I printed in ABS rather than PLA plastic, the only small hurdle I had was in the thermoforming process of the gauntlet (the bent white piece that mounts to the users arm), which required me using a strip heater in the university workshop. If you find yourself in a similar situation, you can check out the details which were posted in one of my previous posts. However, I recommend using PLA if you have the choice to make this part easier, only requiring some boiling water as demonstrated in this video. In itself, this is a really cool technique that I will use in the future to create stronger parts; you can always learn a lot from 3D printing other people’s designs.

Overall the e-NABLE community really has done a great job in refining this design over the years, and I’m already working on some of my own iterations which will hopefully be fed back into the e-NABLE community in the future. If you’re looking for a project to build and learn from, or potentially getting involved in the community and building hands for people in need, Enabling the Future is definitely worth researching.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Kobayashi Fidget Cube

One of the great opportunities presented by 3D printing is to print multiple parts as a single object, and have them move afterwards as a complete assembly. There are many great examples, and this Kobayashi Fidget Cube has been on my “to-print list” for some time now. The file is freely available on Thingiverse, and it is pretty awesome!

The photos above give some idea of how it works; a series of cubes that are linked, allowing them to rotate around through a series of positions as you fold and open sections of the object. However the video below (not my own) shows exactly how it works, and is basically a form of fidget device that is currently a popular trend.

As well as being a fun object, it is a great test of your printer’s accuracy and settings, and I must admit my Cocoon Create only had average results. The cube works, but some of the movements are much stiffer than the video. This is probably to do with my settings, I was a little impatient in printing so did not optimise as much as necessary things like layer thickness (used 0.2mm and should’ve tried 0.1mm) and printing speed (50mm/s instead of perhaps 30mm/s or less). I also had to use a knife to slice some of the bottom layers where the cubes had fused together on the print plate. Not a bad first effort, but I might try printing again soon to get a really smooth operating fidget cube.

– Posted by James Novak

Giant 3D Printed SUP Fin

Behind the scenes I’ve been working on a Stand Up Paddle (SUP) fin project for quite a while now, 3D printing many prototypes, and more often than not, failing! There is more to this project than meets the eye, but for now the details are under wraps. However I thought it might be interesting to share some of the 3D prints in case anyone feels inspired to give it a go themselves.

The design pictured above is the first one that worked successfully without breaking or having other technical issues. Printed in 4 pieces on my Cocoon Create due to the size, it required a bit of gluing, and as you can see from the pink highlight, a bit of gap filling with a 3Doodler Pen (if you want to know more about using a 3D printing pen as a gap filler, check out one of my previous posts all about it). As a result the fin is about 400mm long, huge compared to the fin that came with the board (which for any SUP fans out there is a Slingshot G-Whiz 9’4″)

These images show some of the breakages I’ve had due to layer delamination – unfortunately the optimal way to print the 4 pieces in terms of minimising support material and warping is vertical, however the optimal orientation for strength is laying down on the flat sides (similar to the image on the right). A bit of an oversight on my part I’ll admit, however I was genuinely surprised how much force the flat water put on the fin. Another issue may be the minimal infill, which was also beefed up in my later prints to add internal strength. There is always a delicate balance between print orientation, layer strength and infill in 3D printing, to name just a few!

The main thing is that the fin prototype now works, and I may have a more advanced version being printed using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) as I write this… If you keep an eye on my blog by subscribing below, you may just get to see where this project is going 🙂

– Posted by James Novak

Lucky Bamboo, Lucky 3D Printing

My desk is loaded with 3D prints, I’m surrounded by plastic! To even things out a bit I’ve added some greenery in the form of bamboo. The great thing is that it can grow in water, no need for messy soil, and it doesn’t need much light (hopefully the glowing of my computer screen is plenty!)

However the pot I have for it came with a plastic insert (black) designed for soil. It only fits in one way, being tapered, so I couldn’t just flip it upside down and drill a hole to support the bamboo. Of course, that’s just another excuse to design something new for 3D printing!

The white part in the photos above is the simple part I designed, basically the same dimensions as the original black insert but reversed with an open bottom, and a hole to allow the bamboo to fit through, including its roots. This sits down loosely inside the plant pot, and then 2 smaller inserts slot in around the bamboo when it’s inserted to hold it nice and vertical (right image). All printed without support material on my Cocoon Create, now with the Micro Swiss upgraded hotend (which seems to be working very well).

It’s probably not the sort of design worth sharing on 3D file websites given it is very specific to this plant pot, but if for some reason you want this file just leave me a comment and I’ll email it to you.

– Posted by James Novak

Star Wars Death Trooper

Sometimes you just see a 3D print and think OMG, I NEED THIS!

Enter the Star Wars Death Trooper model by Paul Braddock, available on MyMiniFactory. Having repaired my Cocoon Create 3D printer (again!) in my previous blog post, and also upgraded my version of Cura (losing all of my print settings refined over the last year), this was a great model to iron out the kinks and get back to normality – I hate being without a working 3D printer.

From a technical standpoint my print isn’t perfect with the wall thickness far too thin, leaving some holes and messy details (eg. if you look closely at the eye socket of the skull). My new Cura settings still need some tweaks. However given all the hurdles, it’s still a pretty damn cool print that is really brought to life by the addition of a bit of black paint, and a simple coffee stain for the skull. I recommend checking out the original by Paul to see all the details of the design that aren’t captured well in my print, he’s done a brilliant job of finishing his print to give it an aged bronze look that shows every little scar and crack of the smashed Stormtrooper helmet.

If you want to make one for yourself, don’t forget to upload a photo of your 3D print to Pinshape by May 12th – there is a competition to win 1 of 40 rolls of filament (ABS or PLA) or some Resin if you use an SLA printer. You get an entry for every 3D print you upload of anything on the website!

– Posted by James Novak

Is That A Clogged Nozzle, or…

No it’s just a clogged 3D printer nozzle, thanks for asking!

2017 seems to be my year for repairs on the Cocoon Create 3D printer, it was only a few months ago I wrote a big post about repairing and replacing the PTFE tube after it got seriously clogged. I did some research and found out exactly what the tube is for, and bought a roll of spare tube for future repairs (click here to read more).

Lucky I did! This seems to be the same sort of problem, however instead of the PTFE tube just getting clogged, when I opened up the nozzle the tube had become melted and broke off inside, completely stuck as you can see in the photo. I wonder if the spare PTFE tube I had installed was made from dodgy materials, allowing it to melt? Or maybe the ABS filament had just found a way around the outside of the tube and caused it to clog. Either way it’s getting a bit frustrating to have the same issue.

Luckily this wasn’t too difficult to fix (although I did jump straight on Ebay and buy a couple of spare brass nozzles – just search for RepRap MK10 0.4mm nozzle since the Cocoon Create is based on the RepRap Prusa i3). Using a drill and holding the nozzle with some pliers, I gradually worked my way up from a 2mm to 4mm diameter, clearing out the clogged material. 4mm is almost exactly the same as the internal nozzle diameter, so it cleared everything out nicely.

With some new PTFE tube installed, I’m back up and running again and the first print is coming out nicely (stay tuned to see what it is). Let’s see how long it lasts this time…

– Posted by James Novak

New Year 3D Printer Repairs

After something like 150 hours of 3D printing leading up to Christmas it’s no wonder that my Cocoon Create decided to extend its holiday with some down time to kick off 2017. There have been 2 problems to do with extrusion that I’ve come across, and thought they might be handy to know how to fix for others with this printer, or indeed any of the many derivatives of the original RepRep Prusa i3 which this printer is based off.

The top image shows the first problem which I noticed after some jamming and issues swapping out filaments – basically a build-up of filament “powder” over time from the gear grinding it when it’s been jammed. This one’s a nice easy fix, just a cleanup and a reminder to open up the extruder occasionally to keep things clean. If you’ve never opened the extruder before it’s nothing scary, just 2 bolts on the left where the fan is mounted to the heat-sink which opens the whole thing up as shown above. You might be surprised how simple the whole mechanism is.

After fixing this problem and doing a couple of prints, I then noticed the filament was getting jammed again and I couldn’t push filament through the nozzle no matter what I did. Opening the extruder (same process as before except now removing the small screw on the right of the metal block to release the actual nozzle) the problem was pretty clear – a clog in the PTFE tube which you can see above. A lot of people are surprised to open their extruder and find a plastic tube inside, and this is the first time I’ve really had a problem with it. This tube is made from PTFE, basically Teflon like in your non-stick frypan, and seems to serve a couple of functions from what I’ve read online:

1. it stops heat from the nozzle climbing too high into the extruder and prematurely melting the filament, which would cause serious clogs.
2. being non-stick, it helps the filament keep sliding smoothly down to the nozzle without sticking as it gets warm.

A very cheap, simple part that has a lot of responsibility. Mine must’ve gotten worn out or slightly dislodged during my last attempt at fixing the extruder. Thankfully my printer came with 1 replacement, which I cut to size (make sure both ends are nice and square so that there are no gaps for filament to get caught in) and now I’m up and printing again with no problems. Also I’ve jumped onto Ebay and ordered a 2m length of PTFE tube (inside diameter 2mm, outside diameter 4mm) from China for $2.50 – I recommend anyone who has a 3D printer with this part order some PTFE tube as backup, it’s very cheap but if you need to buy something locally in a 3D printing emergency, prices look at least 10 times higher. For a couple of dollars it might just help keep you sane.

Some good forums discussing PTFE tube issues:

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/flashforge/8RBXZhlggvM/C8wP4w6hzlYJ
• https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/2hca7w/ptfe_teflon_tube_in_hot_end_what_does_it_do_is_it/
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/flashforge/8RBXZhlggvM/discussion

I’ve previously written about another type of clog where filament breaks off inside the extrusion tube as you’re retracting it, and you can’t force a new piece in – check out the post here if this sounds like what you’re experiencing.

Happy 3D printing, happy new year.

– Posted by James Novak