Tuesday, February 17, 2015

3D Printing Tricks

It turns out that these plastics are actually printed by default in a honeycomb structure to save material and weight. at 50% infill.  You can tell the printer to do 100% infill, if you are going to drill and tap holes in it, but it takes longer, and if you have unsupported elements which this part does, it is more likely to sag and warp from weight while printing.  My printer suggested doing 50% infill, but add the holes to the drawing.  This way, the honeycomb structure builds solid sections around the holes, which I can then tap.  I look forward to getting my holed examples this evening.  Tapping four 8-32 holes, and one 1/2"-13 hole means minimal labor before shipping to customer.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you. I am interested in producing some files to use for printing, although I need to decide a on a CAD program (or Sketchup, if that works).

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