Practical 3: 3D-Printing

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This practical is about designing an object that cannot be made subtractively in Fusion 360, then using Cura to slice the design so it can be 3d printed layer by layer. Then we will go to the lab to print the object.

Objective:
1. Design the object.
2. Use Cura to adjust the settings before printing.
3. Operate the 3D printer.

At the end of this activity, I should be able to:

1. Use Fusion 360 to create an object that can be printed.

2. Choose the suitable parameters in Cura before printing.

3. Observe how 3D Printer works.

Design Stage:

As I wanted to design a hinge, so I browsed through some of the videos about hinges, and I followed some of the instructions to practice a bit before I can come up with my own design (shown in Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Firstly, I drew 3 circles with diameters of 20mm, 17mm and 15mm (Fig. 2). As the design should not be too big, and the circles are where the connections would be. There are 3 circles because the inner 2 circles will leave the space for the hinge to move around.

Fig. 2

Then I used "line" to draw a line connecting to the outer circle, and I used copy and paste to get the identical line.

Fif. 3

I connected the two lines and add 1 line around the centre of the diagram, and that completes the whole design. We will be able to get our hinge design from the basic diagram.

Fig. 4

"Extrude" the whole thing by 4mm.

Fig. 5

 "Show" the sketch, "extrude" the centre circle and the trapezium by -8mm, this is because I'm extruding the shapes from the back, so it has to be negative, since I want it to be 4mm above the shape we have just created, the total height should be 8mm.

Fig. 6

View from the side:

Fig. 7

Under "Construct", choose "offset plane" at the inner surface of the cylinder, because I want to mirror the whole object from this plane to get one component of the hinge.

Fig. 8

Under "create", "mirror," select the whole body and the plane we have just created.

Fig. 9

Then select the body and make it into a component by using "Assemble"->"New component", select the whole body. 

Then we will continue with the rotating body part, hide the component, obtain the other component from the sketch as well. "Extrude" the outer ring and the trapezium with 10mm.

Fig. 10

Similarly, make this object into a component, so we will get these 2 components, and it's almost done.

Fig. 11

Use "Assemble", select "revolute" motion, swipe the arrow to adjust the position of the 2 components.

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Choose an angle of 180 degrees for better presentation.

Fig. 14

Final Product:

This cannot be made subtractively because we are unable to cut the excess material away to obtain it, because it will be very difficult to remove the materials around the moving parts as it has only 2mm space in between. So it has to be printed layer by layer which is additive.

 

Cura Settings

STL file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B5sNS0UtdbpNZixO_roXSzd_RmuIV665/view?usp=sharing

Download the STL file from Fusion 360, we can open the stl file in Cura, and select slice, we can check the parameters for our object, infill is 20%, "Support" I chose "everywhere" but "touching build-plate" is good enough. The filament material is PLA and it will be heated to 200℃. It will estimate the time taken to print the hinged object.

Fig.15

After checking all the settings, save the gcode into the disk and transfer it into the 3D printer.

Printing Porcess

1. Select the file from the disk.

2. Preheat and wait for the nozzle to reach 200℃.

3. Start Printing.

Fig.16

Fig. 17

Printing:

Vid. 1

When the printing is done, wait for the temperature to drop to around 45℃ before taking the object out from the platform.

Final Product:

with support:

Fig. 18

without support:

Vid. 2

Reflection:

I enjoyed this practical because it was my first time to 3D Print an object, and I really appreciate the seniors were there and they were so friendly that they helped me a lot, when I did not know where to start, they will demonstrate to us very patiently. Overall I think it was a cool practice, the only difficult part was to remove the support away, as I chose "everywhere" instead of "touching built-plate" because I was not very sure, so I thought it will be good to provide more support. Then it resulted a longer printing time and removing support time. Dr. Noel is very helpful as he taught me how to remove the support more efficiently. AND Kalyani saved my life by lending me her coveralls because I thought it will be in the Fablab, so I will be more careful the next time and 3D printing is fun!