3D Printing my NFT Collection

In my previous post I detailed my first efforts creating a 3D printable NFT collection. At that stage I had created all the 3D models and shared them on the OpenSea platform, but I hadn’t 3D printed any of them.

Well, now I have!

Having created and 3D printed countless voronoi and lattice structures, I knew this wouldn’t be a problem, however, I can certainly breathe a little easier knowing that the models are robust and suitable for even a basic FDM 3D printer. I used my old Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus for the 2 models pictured above, and while the PLA filament was a little stringy (has not been stored well), the result was good enough for a proof of concept. No support material was used, and the total print time was about 1.5 hours.

What’s most fascinating about this to me is that now these NFTs exist in both the virtual and physical worlds at the same time. I currently own the virtual models, confirmed on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, while also owning physical prints of this virtual information. For 0.05 ETH you can buy these 3D models, yet I still own a physical copy. This is where some people have a problem with NFTs, however, for me I think this is the same as what happens with art, music, movies etc. every day; ownership of the original might change, but people still own/trade/share copies. What’s important is that ownership of the original is clearly recorded as a contract (in this case on a blockchain), and can be tracked through time, with royalties paid to the creator each time it is sold.

Anyway, back to the 3D printing. I’m actually offering to send anyone who buys 4 or more of my NFTs 3D printed versions for FREE, anywhere in the world. However, I’m going to improve upon rough FDM prints and get them printed using selective laser sintering (SLS). All you need to do once you buy them is contact me via Twitter (@edditive) or directly here on my blog, show proof of purchase, provide your shipping address, and wait by your mailbox until they turn up. That way you don’t even need a 3D printer to enjoy your NFTs in the real world!

– Posted by James Novak

Xmas Brain Decoration

Let me start this off by agreeing with you – yes, this is a weird idea!

But when you work at the Herston Biofabrication Institute and spend most of your days working on neurosurgery and other medical projects, it hopefully makes a bit more sense why anyone would 3D print a “Merry Xmas” brain to decorate our office Christmas tree.

The design of this was quite simple and was based on some tutorials I’ve previously written about mashups and remixes – basically, taking 2 (or more) different files and joining them together in a new and creative way. The brain itself was downloaded here, and then the letters were quickly modelled in Solidworks and exported as individual STL files. All of this was then combined in Meshmixer, which is my go-to software for this type of mashup project (and it’s free for anyone looking to do the same).

This was 3D printed on my Craftbot Flow IDEX XL 3D printer in PLA, with a small hole drilled on the top afterwards to thread a piece of string through. And of course, I’m giving this design away for free to anyone crazy enough to also want a 3D printed Xmas brain decoration! Just click the links below to your preferred 3D print file website and enjoy:

Thingiverse, Cults, MyMiniFactory, Prusa, Pinshape.

Merry Christmas and happy 3D printing 🙂

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Outdoor Lights in PETG

It’s official – my entire house now uses 3D printed light covers!

If you follow this blog you may have seen some of my previous indoor light covers, featuring a 3D scanned sea urchin shell and a pineapple. Of course, I couldn’t stop with indoor lights, especially since the outdoor wall-mounted lights on my house looked like the cheapest fittings available. They were desperately in need of an upgrade.

Luckily the fitting includes a piece that is easily unscrewed to accommodate standard DIY light covers. A few simple measurements, including the diameter of the fitting and distance of the protruding light bulb, meant that I had everything needed to create my own design in CAD. For this one I decided to use Fusion 360, just to keep my skills up as I’ve done a few projects in Solidworks recently. The only other limitation was the size of the Prusa MK3S+ build volume (250 x 210 x 210mm), as I wanted the light cover to be 3D printable in a single piece.

Putting all of this information in Fusion 360 gave me a starting point, and of course I began experimenting with a few simple ideas. The one that stuck was this collection of lofts that twist in different directions. Not overly complex, just a clean design that is easy to clean (a complex lattice would just invite spiders!) and protects the lightbulb from sun/rain. Because these are mounted quite high on the walls, what I really wanted was a cool effect when you are looking directly up at the light from below – see the top right image.

Something else I experimented with for the first time with this design was 3D printing using PETG filament – specifically, PETG from eSun. Why? Mainly because PETG has good UV stability so should last while out in the elements and sunshine. But what I’ve really enjoyed is how easy it is to print with – no warping, good adhesion to the build platform and no smelly fumes while printing. Happy days! I actually used the default PETG settings in PrusaSlicer and they seem to be dialled in nicely (no surprises really, thanks Prusa). The material also has a translucency, so the light shade has a bit of a glow when the light is on as you can see in the photos. If you’re looking for more details about the material properties and slicing settings for PETG, this article is a good starting point.

And of course, I’m giving this design away for FREE! Download from your favourite 3D file marketplace: Thingiverse, Pinshape, Cults, MyMiniFactory or PrusaPrinters.

Happy 3D printing.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Toys with Moving Parts

My desk is covered with 3D prints, some of them my own designs, and others are just cool examples of what can be done with a home 3D printer. This is one of those examples.

Stian Ervik Wahlvaag (@agepbiz) has created a clever range of 3D printed vehicles known as “Tiny Surprise Eggs” – why? Well, because they fit within an egg of course! The unique feature of each toy (and egg) is that they feature moving parts printed in place, without the need for any support material. Once the toy is taken off the printer, it is ready to go. The example pictured above is “Surprise Egg #7 – Tiny Car Carrier” and all the vehicle wheels rotate, and the car carrier itself can raise and lower the ramps.

While I didn’t print the egg, I did scale these prints up 200% to have something a little bit more child-friendly. Unfortunately I enjoy them so much they have permanently stayed on my desk, but I promise I’ll print my son another set! The moving parts still work really well at this increased scale and provide some clever design tricks to ensure multiple parts can be printed as an assembly. As an example, above is a cross section through one of the cars showing how the wheels and axels are designed within the main body of the car. Some simple angled details mean that no support material is needed when printed in this orientation, yet from the outside the car just looks like it has normal cylindrical wheels. Great example of how to design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) as it’s known.

Following the vehicle carrier, I’ve also 3D printed “Surprise Egg # 6 – Tiny Jet Fighter” which features wings which fold out, again at 200% scale and with no support material. Both of these designs, as well as at least 8 more surprise egg vehicles, are free to download from Thingiverse, and highly recommended as a way to test your print settings (if there are any issues the moving parts may end up fused together), and learn a few of the tricks for designing assemblies for 3D printing.

If you print these yourself, or have any other recommended prints that include clever design details like moving parts, please share them in the comments section.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Pineapple Light

3D printing light covers and lamps are always fun projects, you can’t really go wrong.

Continuing from a previous post where I outlined the process of designing sea urchin light covers for my house, I’ve still been wanting to design another light cover to mix things up so each room isn’t the same. Enter the pineapple light! 🍍

Unlike the previous process of designing the sea urchin light from scratch using a 3D scan, this time I was able to find something on Thingiverse that was almost perfect – this model of a pineapple. The bottom part had a really nice geometric pattern that saved me hours of mucking around in CAD and designing the same thing from scratch. This is one of the things I love about the 3D printing community – the open sharing of 3D models to be remixed (also known as a mashup) just like a song or video into something new and creative. You can read more about remixing in one of my previous tutorials.

Similar to the sea urchin light, all the pineapple needed was to be scaled to the right size, hollowed, given a thickness, and have a neck piece added to connect with the light fitting. This neck piece was directly imported from my previous project in Meshmixer (free CAD software), and both pieces were joined together. Nice and easy!

Just like the sea urchin light, these pineapples were 3D printed on a Prusa i3 MK3S in a natural PLA from eSun – it’s a translucent material which I found from previous experiments to work really well for light covers when given a very light dusting of white spray paint. The painted exterior still allows the light to shine through nicely, but just helps define the form better than the natural finish on its own. If you want to see exactly how this compares to the natural filament on its own, or a pure white PLA, check out my sea urchin light post. This design can also be 3D printed without any support material.

Best of all, you can download my pineapple light cover completely free from Thingiverse, Pinshape, Cults and MyMiniFactory! Just like the original design of the pineapple which helped me in this project, I hope this remix will help you in your own project – even if you don’t have the same size light fitting as me, with a bit of editing in Meshmixer or another CAD program, you can easily modify this design to suit your own needs. Enjoy.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Printed Face Shields vs. Masks

As the graphic above shows, 3D printing a face shield is twice as fast as 3D printing a face mask. How do I know?

In my latest journal article called A quantitative analysis of 3D printed face shields and masks during COVID-19, I documented 37 face shields and 31 face masks suitable for fused filament fabrication (FFF, or FDM). The graphic provides the average data for all the different designs, including a range of qualities including the amount of filament required, number of 3D printed parts, total volume of all parts, and the dimensions of the largest part for each design (so you know if it will fit within your 3D printer’s build volume). If you’re interested in all of the specific details for each of the individual designs, all of the data is free to access here. You might also want to start with my first article analysing 91 3D printing projects at the start of the pandemic.

Why is this important? Well, if you look at the graph above, you can see that the print time and amount of filament for each individual design varies significantly. For face shields, the shortest print time was 46mins to produce a single part with 12g of material for the Version 1 face shield from MSD Robotics Lab. The longest print time for a face shield was 4h 34min (274min) and required 63g of filament, also only a single part from MITRE Corporation. This means that for each MITRE Corporation face shield you could 3D print almost 6 MSD Robotics Lab face shields. This is a big difference if you’re trying to maximise the quantity you produce for your local hospital or health centre. Below you can visually see how different they are, and why there is such a difference in print time and filament use.

Print times vary even more for face masks, with the shortest print time being 2h 14min (134mins) requiring 32g of filament for a 3-part design from Collective Shield (v.0.354). This design is 3D printed in a flat form only 0.6mm thick and then folded into a 3D face mask, often referred to as a “2.5D print.” In contrast, the longest print time for a face mask was 10h 32mins (632mins) with 130g of filament required to print 26 separate parts, forming a respirator style mask called Respirator V2 from Maker Mask. Both of these different designs can be seen below.

Assuming a price for PETG filament of $30/Kg, the cost of 3D printed components for face shields can be calculated to range from $0.33–1.95, while the range of face masks was $0.96–3.90. For one-off products these differences may not be critical to makers, yet when multiplied by hundreds of thousands or even millions (e.g. the IC3D Budmen face shield has been 3D printed over 3 million times!), the potential investment by makers, organisations, charities and businesses may vary significantly based on the selection of one design over another, or one version of a design over another.

If you want to find more of the data and read the detailed analysis, please read the full article here. I look forward to continuing to bring you new analysis of 3D printing during COVID-19.

– Posted by James Novak

3D Print some Aloha

At this time of COVID-19 lockdowns, panic buying and general insanity, we could all do with a bit of aloha. Aloha of course is the traditional Hawaiian greeting, but it also has many other meanings and uses including love, peace and compassion.

If you need a little aloha, you can download this to 3D print for free from Thingiverse, Pinshape, Cults or MyMiniFactory.

This was actually designed to stick on our front door which is freshly painted in a very tropical blue. The design process was very simple:

1. Create the outline in Adobe Illustrator.
2. Export as a DXF file.
3. Open in Solidworks.
4. Extrude.
5. Export as a STL file for 3D printing.

Print it large, print it small, and spread some aloha vibes.

– Posted by James Novak

 

Surviving COVID-19 with 3D Printed Toilet Paper

Most of us would agree that some of the events of the last couple of weeks have overshadowed the seriousness of COVID-19 (Coronavirus). In particular, the panic buying of toilet paper, which seemed to start here in Australia and spread like the Coronavirus itself around the globe, has been quite ridiculous to watch. While there is a serious side to this issue, it’s become one of those situations that you have to have a sense of humour about in order to get through.

In response, I thought it would be fun to start 3D printing toilet paper rolls (aka. loo rolls). What started as a single 3D model last week, quickly turned into a series of different toilet rolls that can all be downloaded for free and stockpiled to your heart’s content! Simply select your preferred 3D file platform to download: Thingiverse, Pinshape, Cults or MyMiniFactory.

Collect them all:

1. Hotel Triangle: For a touch of class and those 5-star vibes.
2. Hanging Square: Fully stocked and ready to go.
3. Neat Perf: The clean-cut toilet roll.
4. Half: Nervous times, time to print some more.
5. Last Square: Oh dear….

They were all modelled in Solidworks at half the size of a regular roll of toilet paper. If you prefer a different size, just scale them up or down (i.e. scale 200% to be the same size as a real roll). Great to carry with you everywhere you go for any unexpected emergencies 😉

Divide them amongst your family members, share them with your neighbours, be generous and take a few spares to work – we’re all in this together during Coronavirus 2020.

– Posted by James Novak

 

3D Printed Model Aircraft Stand

What good is a model aircraft if it’s stuck on the ground? Planes are made to be in the air!

Unfortunately in our recent interstate moves the stand for this model aircraft was lost. But as I’ve said many times on this blog, including the previous post, 3D printing to the rescue! Projects like this really tick all the boxes for me:

1. From idea/need to the final solution can be done in a matter of hours.
2. No need to spend a lot of money buying a replacement (if you can even find one). With 3D printing you can make your own for next to nothing.
3. Bring the product back to life. While there was no need to throw this aircraft away now that it had no stand, some products are not so lucky. If you can replace a missing part, you can extend the use and enjoyment of it.
4. Share it – chances are someone, somewhere, may be looking for exactly the same part. Just as I’m doing here, by sharing what you make, you might save one more product from going to landfill.

Having said that, you can freely download and edit this model aircraft stand from your favourite 3D printing platform: Thingiverse, Pinshape, Cults or MyMiniFactory.

It was designed in Autodesk Fusion 360, and features 2 pieces that print nice and flat, making them strong and durable. Fitting them together is tight, you may need to shave off a little plastic with a file or knife depending on your print quality, but this ensures that you won’t need any glue, and it should hold a good amount of weight without wobbling. The critical dimensions you may be interested in are the size of the stand tip that slots into the aircraft: It measures 6.0mm long (front to back direction of aircraft), 2.3mm wide (wing to wing direction), and 6.0mm tall as pictured below.

If you need a different size, please feel free to make modifications to the files uploaded to the various 3D printing platforms, and then re-share them as a remix. I’m not an aircraft collector and don’t know how many different geometries there may be for stands, this was just the one we needed. Hopefully it is useful for someone else.

– Posted by James Novak

Mannequin Head Remix

Close but no cigar.

Sometimes you find something close to what you want on Thingiverse, Pinshape or other 3D printing platforms, but it’s just not quite right. Well, there is often something you can do about it, and it won’t cost a cent.

I’ve written several tutorials about using free software Meshmixer to make various modifications, for example creating a mashup of 2 different files or adding some text to a design. On this occasion I found a 3D scan of a styrofoam mannequin head on Thingiverse, which included all of the messy details you’d expect from a foam model (smaller head in the image above right). Great if you’re after realism, but not great when you want nice smooth surfaces for 3D printing. The model was also not at the correct scale, and I wanted a mannequin head to use as a model.

The scale was an easy fix, and of course could be done in your slicing software.  Cleaning up the surfaces was also quite simple using the ‘Sculpt’ tool and choosing one of the smoothing brushes. This essentially irons out all the rough details, smoothing out the model as you brush over it. A few minutes of work and a rough model is now clean and ready for 3D printing – which of course I’ve uploaded as a remix on Thingiverse so you can download it for yourself.

The above left image shows the 3D printed result from a Creality CR-10 S5, a very cheap, very large FDM machine with a build volume measuring 500x500x500mm. Obviously my settings weren’t great, the seam is in the worst possible position, and because I wanted a quick result I used only a single wall thickness and almost no infill, which split apart at the top. However, it’s fine for my purposes, and the surface quality on most of the model is fantastic.

Happy smoothing!

– Posted by James Novak

Update 20/02/2023

Below is an image showing the dimensions of the model around the head where you might need to fit a helmet or hat (in mm). If you need larger/smaller, you can just scale the model to suit.