Prints and Discussion
For this project I really wanted to experiment with what I can get away with now that I did not have to slice my objects before printing them. I had a lot of fun with this project and I really enjoyed the process of midair filament. These objects can not be generated by a slicer because of the sharp overhangs and the midair filament. Cura would suggest supports to print the object and they will give errors if you attempt to generate them.
For my first artifact I wanted to see how well my printer could handle a little bit of over hang and printing thin circles of filament on top of each other with no supports and no infill. For this print I just created a circle and then each iteration of the loop I move the next layer to the side by a distance of extrude_width/4. I created the back and forth motion with a simple if statement that moves the circle in the other direction when a certain height is reached. This print is the least impressive of the 3 but I still feel that it is an interesting print that I slightly doubted would properly print.
For my second print I wanted to push my idea from my first print further. This time I created a tornado looking object by increasing the size of the circle as it goes up and instead of a back and forth motion I wanted it to spiral up. I created the small platform to prove that it printed starting with a smaller circle and ending with a larger one. To create the spiral pattern I just turned the turtle to the left by 1 degree for every new layer.
My first 2 artifacts printed relatively well. To my surprise I did not have many issues with these prints and most of my problems came from my third print.
For my third print I did know what I wanted to create before writing the code. I recently went to a butterfly sanctuary in Tempe, Arizona and this was a big inspiration for this third print. I wanted to print a butterfly and implement the non-planar movement and the midair filament in the wings of the butterfly. The body of the butterfly I wanted to keep simple so I did a square spiral so I could focus making the wings properly without wrecking my printer. The wings are ellipses that I increase in size and are angled by using t.roll(-10). One of the major issues I had making the wings was when I angled them, they would clip through the body which if I had tried printing that may have really messed up my nozzle. So I implemented a take-off method within the wings creation that would print the ellipse flat until it reached the end of the body and then it would grow at an angle. I also created a landing method which detected when the wing was getting closer to the body of the butterfly and when it was close to the proper Z height and began to pitch and roll the turtle so it would “land” on the back of the butterfly without piercing it. Another issue I had was actually getting the filament to print midair. I eventually settle on an extrude rate of 0.0475, a nozzle speed of 500 mm/min and I also pointed one of my plug in fans at the print bed to help it cool a little faster. I am very proud of the final product and even though it was a little stressful working with the wings I had a lot of fun with this project.
Cura G-Code Images
Patrick,
Awesome prints, I love the butterfly idea a ton! You nailed that wing quality too, seems like it was a very careful and intricate process. Did you have to monitor the print the entire time to ensure that each wing layer cooled in the correct position? Glad to hear that the first two didn’t give you much trouble, how many trials did the butterfly take you? Definitely might use your idea as inspiration for my next project, didn’t know that the printer can successfully print filament mid-air and dry like how yours did. Great job!
The butterfly took me like 5 solid tries to get perfect. I had many issues with the wings not printing or overlapping or not cooling fast enough. For each trial of the butterfly I slowed the speed of the nozzle, slowed the speed of the extrude rate and I pointed a big fan at the printer and that seemed to help the filament cool a lot faster.
Very cool prints. I especially love the butterfly, the solution you found for angling the wings around the solid body was very cool and I’m impressed with how well the angle of the wings held in the final print. I also really like the tornado, the intense imbalance of the shape is really dynamic and I’m impressed it came out as solid as it did, when I’ve don aggressive overhangs like that the lower layers would melt off leaving a very ragged form. Overall a very neat series of prints.
I was really doubtful that the tornado was going to print at all. I was really just testing how far I could push the printer in terms of the overhang and it came out really well on the first print so I just ran with it. I am more proud of the butterfly though. I slowed the nozzle speed and the extrude flow speed as well as pointed a fan at the printer to make sure the filament cooled as quickly as possible.
Your prints are extremely creative! I would’ve never thought of using outside sources like the fan to help with cooling when it came to the butterfly print. The tornado one also looks amazing! How many tries did that take you? Did you need to mess with any extruder settings to get your final print?