3D Printing👺👽

For this lesson we are taught how to make out 3 drawing into an actual 3D object! We also revisit skills that were learnt before like 3D drawing on Fusion 360. We also get to learn a new skill which is using the Ultimaker to adjust our 3D drawings and plan out how the final product of the 3D printing will look like. 

The assignment presented to the class was to design and make a 3D object that could not be made subtractively. The idea I came up with was ball in a box as it hits the requirement and it is a simple object which would mean that it would take long for the 3D printer to print as we were only allowed 2hrs of printing time.

This product cannot be made subtractively because it consists of 2 components a ball and a box both of which is needed in order for the product to work as intended.

3D design (Fusion 360)✎

So for the 3D design, first open up Fusion 360 and click on the 'create sketch' tool.

Then select a plane, for convenience sake it would be better to select the plane shown in the picture.

By using the '2-point rectangle tool', create a square 50mm by 50mm.

Then click on finish sketch and the drawing should look like this. It is important it is standing upright like this as it makes adding the ball much easier and better than the sketch lay flat.

Now, left click on the sketch and click on the 'press pull' tool 

Once clicking on it a page will come up to allow for adjustments. Click on 'direction' tab and change to symmetric and set the 'distance' to 25mm..

Since the end product would contain a ball in the box, there should be a way to see that the ball is in the box so hole on the box is added so that the ball can be seen in the box..

To make the hole, we first click on the 'create sketch' tool and make a rectangle 10mm by 20mm

Then, click finish sketch and we can use the 'extrude' tool on the sketch

Set the distance to - 1 so that it will extrude inward

It should look like this.

In order for the ball to fit in the box the box needs to be hollowed out. So, to hollow out the box, we first click on the 'shell' tool.

Once clicking the tool and selecting the box, a page will come up. Set the inside thickness to 1 mm so that the wall of the box will not be too thick and will not take up too much time when printing out.

After hollowing out the inside of the box we can now add the ball into the box. To make this task easier, we could "cut" the box in half. First click on the 'inspect' tab and click on the 'section analysis' tool. 

It should like this

Now to create the ball we need to go back to creating a sketch. Select the plane that lines up flush with the opened up part of the box.

Under the 'create' tab click on the 'line' tool and sketch a line bigger than 10mm. For this instance, 25mm is used.

Now select the 'center diameter circle' tool and line it up at the middle of the line and sketch the circle to know where the middle point of the line is, a triangle symbol will pop up when the middle point is hovered on.

Now we can move the sketch into to the box. To align the circle to the inside of the box, simply click on the 'tangent' tool and click on the lines that should be lined up.

Now to make the sketch into an actual ball, click the 'revolve' tool

After clicking on the tool, a page will pop up to request for selection of the profile and axis. For profile, click on either halves of the circle. For axis, click on the center line of the circle

The ball is now created in the 3D form and once the section analysis is off, we can see the finished 3D sketch.

Here is the finish product!!!

Now to make the 3D drawing into a 3D object, we need to transfer this sketch to Ultimaker and make some minor adjustments. 

Since the 3D sketch was quite big and would take long time to print out, scale down the measurements of the sketch by half so that the printing time would be faster. To reduce the size, click on the sketch and on the left tab click on the 'scale' tool.

The orientation of the product should be changed so that the viewing hole of the box is facing downwards on the platform of the 3D printer. To do so, click on the 'rotate' tool on the left and rotate the product.

Here is the file for the Ultimaker.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJEXcuMCO8E7yynZIXaegq3qzc7Z8amP/view?usp=sharing

Hero Shot:

Reflection:

For this lesson, to me it felt like we were not really learning new skills apart from Ultimaker but rather, it felt like revisiting on what was taught and learnt before. Since we had already learnt 3D drawing and skills needed to use Fusion 360. What I liked about this task given was that it had a lot of freedom for me to use my imagination to create my product I want.

Although the product did not turn out as exactly I had wanted but I learnt from my mistakes such as the opening for the box should be facing downwards to the platform of the 3D printer so that the hole can have somewhat of a support when being printed so it will not melt, making it bigger than intended.. I also learnt that the ball should be at the bottom side of the  box when being printed so there is more support for it and it will not fall halfway before being properly printed.

I used to think that 3D printing was extremely easy and just only needed the 3D sketcch from Fusion 360, now I think that there is a lot more that goes into the printing of the 3D object such as using Ultimaker to give the product final adjustments and adjust speed of the 3D printer. And also the orientation, placement of certain components play an important factor to producing a working and appealing 3D product. So next, for the upcoming tasks, I will ensure to take into consideration of everything I learnt in this assignment and make things work to my advantage.