Gyroscope
Seeing as last week’s #ThingiThursday ended in utter disaster we decided to pick something a little bit easier than a plain sheet with mountainous peaks… how about a spinning gyroscopic thingumabob complete with moving ball bearings… a synch.
This week we tested out some new software as well as putting it through netfabb, willitprint.com is a fantastic little but of WebGL software from Dr. Phil Reeves and co. over at the Econolyst Ltd. The process, although still in Beta mode at the moment, is fairly straightforward; upload your model, select your printer, print resolution and the software will tell you if you item prints.
This model passed the test and we’d spotted others who had printed this item perfectly on the UP! Plus, so after last week’s New Order model was torn apart we went even more ambitious, perhaps the UP!’s tallest order yet (except printing pasta that is).
Unfortunately due to office hour time constraints I couldn’t put this on the fine setting, for the estimated print time for the highest resolution was 11 hours. Normal it was then at just the four hours five minutes.
It seemed to print without any hitches, that was until, of course, the very last layer, when instead of correctly finishing the UP! decided to hang and singe a hole into a ball bearing. An emergency stop led to very little damage being caused and a more than retrievable print.
This is one of the first prints off the UP! whereby the raft was easy to remove in one piece. A handy tip, taught by the Google Plus 3D Printing Community, is to remove the raft while the print is still hot. All well and good when you’re sitting next to the thing but if you’ve left it over night, per se, I’d imagine the raft from this to be virtually impossible to remove.
*UPDATE: Another tip has since suggested that putting it in freezer over night is a better way of removing rafts. Either way, not room temperature.
After a spot of cleaning the print itself is a nifty piece of work, hats off to Idea Beans for the design. Printed in one part, it does spin quite nicely after being freed, the balls are a little stiff but without doubt had it have been printed on the fine setting this would be fully functioning.
In all this is our most successful print to-date. It works, it is intricate, it is a glimpse into the future of this bleeding edge technology. It’s one of the first parts I’ve felt a genuine wow factor emanating from my colleagues.
Next week a Yoda bust… jokes of course. If you have a serious suggestion for Thingi Thursday let us know in the comments box below please note we will not be sending any parts out.
You can follow the progress of #ThingiThursday on Twitter and Google Plus
