Submitted 11 months ago by IMALlama@lemmy.world to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3ca9e171-34d3-431b-893b-0a53017500e3.jpeg
The joys of parts with not friendly printing geometry. There’s another cylindrical recess running at 90 degrees to the one that’s visible in this photo.
Apologies for the very obvious layer lines. Harsh direct overhead lighting makes them a lot more obvious. The prints are much better in person, I promise.
45° is a commonly used angle for printing guns stuff actually.
45° is a great cheat code for overhangs assuming you can keep the parts on your bed.
Also less likely to crack under the pressure of a reciprocating slide, since they usually crack along layer lines.
First try or multiple test prints? Did you manually place each tree support on the half cylindrical overhang? Do you think they were needed, given that the top most point of the half cylinder is the same overhang, or am I seeing a tiny bevel at the point where you reduced the overhang corner?
Looks like you’re building a jig or furniture.
First try. I’m running klipper with z calibration with a bed mesh, so my first layers are very consistent.
I manually painted the trees in two locations. The first was below the cylinder cutouts even start to give the print a touch more stability, but I probably could have gotten away without them. The second was for the small overhang at the top of the cylinder. This is ASA, which tends to sag on overhangs a bit more than PLA. A bevel would have been a great way to eliminate the need for the second set of trees.
The prints are the middle section of a rebar clamp for my garden. I’ll try to post a photo of the completed unit in a day or two. So not a jig per say, but functionally very similar. Good eye!
The impressiveness of the rest of the print makes the layer lines not even noticeable.
Seems like they would have printed fine with the arch at the top. The arch might have slight stepping but they would have looked a whole lot better.
I updated the OP. The dimensions in the arch is the feature that matters for this print.
The prints really do look pretty good under normal lighting. The orientation did not impact print quality. Elis has a nice demo of this on his site
Living dangerously would mean that you print the same part 20 times at slightly different orientations, put them all in a bag and pick one at random for a structured part.
Any reason you didn’t print them lying down?
Only kinda sorta dangerous, I’m not leaning into chaos random. I’ll update the post with a better view of the final part. The two cylindrical recesses are the dimensionally important features and bridging would hurt that.
My guess would be that they need those shafts smooth, but if the outside is smooth it doesn’t matter as much?
chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
What is the part for? What does it do?
IMALlama@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s the center section of a rebar clamp for a plant support structure in my garden. I’m hoping to get a photo of it installed today.
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I was wondering if it was some sort of alignment/clamp for something like pipes or rods, or maybe some sort of bushing/bearing holders (think linear rods). Your tuning looks great btw, look pretty nice even in the worst case lighting conditions, adhesion not an issue doing this way? My dad asked me to print some stuff he designed for his beekeeping tools, has a bearing surface that’s awkward to print accurately, I’m probably going to resist that with this as inspiration, other than the helper ears I see on the build plate anything else you did?
To ask questions, for the application does dimensional accuracy actually matter? AFAIK rebar isn’t exactly the tightest wrt tolerances (I know flat products, not long products, but knowing what hotroll coils look like I’m assuming it’s similar), could probably have gotten away with a different orientation and could probably have avoided supports (I find arches print nicely). Having said that though, thinking strength might be another reason to print the way you did, face down and you have shear & torsion in between layers, thinking that’s still a concern if you printed it standing, but yeah, just thoughts.