Hello
I am a senior here at JMU studying accounting and finance. After graduation, I will be moving back to DC and working in Northern Virginia. I enjoy watching a lot of Youtube on pretty much any random topic. I decided to take 3D printing because I am going to graduate soon and think that it is something really cool that I will have a very hard time learning about outside of school.
Castle
My grab bag known was a castle, and although it wasn’t the most difficult print to create, it did take a little while just because I did not yet understand the software. I made it pretty basic with a square and a little tower; however, spacing the squares to create the top of the wall took some effort because the first time I did it the pieces did not line up and it looked sloppy. After playing around with it though I did get them symmetrical.
20 Objects
From top left down
1. French Robot guy
2. Spoon
3. House
4. Ladder
5. Nameplate
6. Star Hat
7.Cone
8. Ring
9. Tree
10. Stop Sign
11. Castle (my grab bag)
12 Pyramid with River between it
13. Dresser Drawer
14 Globe
15. Chocolate Heart Box
16. Moon
17. Wine Glass
18 Dumbell
19. TV
20. Hammer
21. Spear
Of my 20 designs, I decided to print my dumbell, mostly because I did not understand how supports worked and I wanted to see how it affected the design. It came out pretty well; however, it was not perfectly rounded because the bottom that printed made it a little uneven. all in all though, I felt that it came out pretty well.
Moving Parts
For my moving parts project, I wanted to make something that could move with the wheels firmly stuck in the piece. While I wasn’t specifically designing a certain vehicle, I suppose this looks a lot like a steamroller. The reason my design is only half of the final product below is because I just needed to print the design twice because it is symmetrical. The final product came out rudimentary, but worked as I hoped. I had to really play with the pieces to fit them all in tightly but they did fit together nicely in the end.
Final Project
For my final project, I am working to design a biplane, both with a moving propeller and wheels. The design of the plane is coming along well; however it definitely needs some fine tuning. I wanted to get the base design down before going in and perfecting the placement of all the parts. The propeller was just a fidget spinner, but i filled in the center to create my own cylindrical hole. The legs and wheels I have put some thought into; however have not yet decided about how I would like to proceed.
Final Project Outcome
My final project really did not come out how I hoped it would and while I believe the design was good, the print was very poor.
As you can see in the picture above, my biplane printed with a lot of support attached. While this was expected, I was not expecting the support to be so hard to remove.
As you can see above, when removing the supports, my front wheels snapped off. I was trying to be careful with them; however, due to the skinnier legs, they did not hold up with support. The supports in between the 2 wings also would not come off without pulling the bars off that connected the wings. I went back to make the bars thicker, but that was not enough. The back half of the plane I am happy with as well as the propeller. The only way I could think of to make the legs not snap off would be to nearly double the size of the plane. Which would have taken close to 35-40 hours to print. Want to figure out if there is any other way to make the plane easier to pull off of the supports.
Attempt 2:
For my 2nd attempt, I decided to redesign my plane so that the wings would hopefully come out better. I made the legs thicker too so that they could print and not snap off.
As you can see above, this new design was not enough. The legs still snapped off the 2nd time and the top wing did not print correctly (I tried 3 times with similar results). I am not sure what was wrong with the wings; however, I am changing my design to make the legs significantly larger. Although when I do this they look kind of ridiculous, it is the only way I see the print working.
Fusion 360 20 Objects
For my 20 Objects, I decided to go down more of the modern art route. This was because I struggled a lot with getting fusion to do what I wanted. Most of my actions did not turn out how I wanted them to. I also was confused with how to copy /move my designs all to one place because when I was trying to move them, one of my designs moved somewhere and I have not been able to locate it. While I have found fusion very complicated, I can say that I have slowly been getting better at it.
