Still waiting for my 3d printer to arrive...

3D Printing
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Still waiting for my 3d printer to arrive… so I decided to make some experimental digital sculptures for now. I am sure some of these will be hard to print… please chime in with your expertise!

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This prints will take their time, but it’s a nice design. How did you generate the structures?

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I dont think you will be able to print that properly whitout suports
If you use supprts it will look quite bad

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@Emre, thanks for your input. I was hoping the little arches would help it bridge the gaps. Would adjusting the layer thickness or printing speed make any difference on this type of prints?

@Christophe& Henrik, the model was made in 3D Max using the modify and topology tools. No fractals was harmed :slight_smile:

Another thought I had is to put led lights inside the sculpture to give it a soft glow

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I think it would take time and testing to get it right and into good printing shape
The curves help if its at a cretain angle or more

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Actualy, could you post the file somewhere so we can try?

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That’s the next step… getting used to workflow of making and looking at STL and G-Code files!

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I am also considering making this sculpture printable in 4 pieces, like the growth ring of a tree… less wasted material if it fails also.

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I suggest that when you get your printer, cut a small chunk of the thing off 3 or so layers, print it, see how you can make it better, repeat this like 4 times then make the full size one to the specifications of that chunk then enjoy.

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Yeah the reason for doing the thing i just posted is so you save plastic and time

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wow how long does it take to … errr … master 3d max to do something like this? lol

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@howard_chu If you remove those vertical separations that create the striated columns, then yes you might be able to print this at current layer thickness limits (0.1mm) with ABS, otherwise the material as used in current FDM processes simply won’t allow for that level of nuance.

Also, at 0.1mm, you’re probably looking at a very long print time.

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True

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Thanks for all your comments. I will spend some time on this tonight to simplify the model and repost the results!