Student Objectives

If at first you don’t succeed, fail; fail again.

Pre-work, or crystal ball Parallel Design

I own a UNIZ Ibee (a 4K monochrome MSLA resin printer), and an Anycubic Wash And Cure Plus station for, well washing and curing prints. These were initially bought to do some Small Businessy things. Life had other plans though, and those involved a lot of moving. Given the safety precautions required in working with resin, I wasn’t able to keep it set up consistently and printing regularly. This left me with probably a few hundred hours of research in the 3d printing space, and unfortunately limited printing time.

In terms of 3D scanning, I’ve previously played with photogrammetry in Sony’s lovely Sony 3D Creator app

In The Weeds

To start off this week, I went about getting myself authorized to use the resin printer in the space, a FormLabs Form 2, and a quic rundown on using the space’s FDM printer, the Prusa i3 MK3S with MMU2S. My notes from that are below

Authorization process Notes:

Resin Printer

• Form Labs Form 2
• Pre form is the slicer from FormLabs
• 2 manual wash basina
• Used iso container
• 20 mins in the iso bath
• Cure station includes temperature settings, different per resin
• “Gray V4" is kinda the standard resin, economical and good results
• Can create account on form labs site, register printer to dashboard, can keep track of print, see live assessment of FEP quality
• If heat map looks pretty uniformly gray, time replace the FEP
• Resin Stock
  • Gray V4
    • “doesn't need to cure" lul
  • Clear
  • High temp (up to ~300c)
  • Durable, polypropylene like
    • Fragile until it's cured
    • Let it cure on the supports
  • Rough 2000
    • Polyethylene-like, 2000 corresponds to rating, very stiff
  • Basically any FormLabs resin cartridge can be used, can make a formal case for stocking it in the lab
  • Tray has to match the resin.
• the overhead Red light’s for lighting workspace without UV curing resin
  • more relevant for the previous printer
• Press and hold pwr button at the end to Hybernate machine, preserve LCD
• Stick around for first part of print, sometimes spits out Resin Quantity warning and won't print until checked
• Tank will be keyed to the first resin used with it, is blank until then
• Max build: ~5.9”³

FDM Printer

• Prusa i3 MK3S with MMU2S

• Prusa slicer should have presets

• Different bed for PLA (green “Smooth2") vs everything else (" textured”)

• Put it on SD card, select Print from SD

• Will warn when runs out of filament

• Crash protection, will stop if blowing

• Have to tell it which filament

• Heats up to temperature

• .04 mm nozzle

• Dan Williams: “For stuff near a hotend or any other heat source: it is also a good idea to print in white or another light color if possible. Black materials absorb dramatically more radiated thermal energy than white and even with temperature resistant materials: less heat is better heat and people too often overlook the thermal implications of color choice.”

  Prusa Knowledge Base

  3D Scanner

  3D Scanner - Afinia ES360 - i3Detroit

  Afinia ES360 Desktop 3D Scanner

  • Basically, extremely finicky and no one has suceeded in getting much better than a barely workable scan. Very not endorsed.

Building a Model

To build a 3d model, I really puzzled for a bit about what the given parameters would look like. Creative Design has not been my strong suit this year, unless we’re talking Interior Design (in which case, ask me about how I’m turning a hallway into a pantry!).

After consulting my advisor to make sure it wouldn’t be following-the-letter but flouting the spirit of the assignment, I decided on the classic “sphere inside a cube skeleton.” If this goes well, I’m considering going a little farther out the spiral and seeing if I can replace the sphere I CAD’ed with a spheric lithophane generated online. It’s around my wife’s birthday, and I’d love to give her a nifty photo tealight rather than just give the planet more waste-plastic. Plus Adrián showed us all his sphere in a cage during global open time so now I feel like have to differentiate a little. Thanks Adrián.

The Process