Monday 27 January 2014

Test Print Summary - Future Guidelines

At this point in time I am still waiting to find out if my model has been given the go ahead by Shapeways to get printed. I think I fixed the issues they made me aware of so it *should* be okay provided the bits bellow 0.7mm aren't deemed too important.

As my last post shows the last few days have been busy, stressful, a little bit disappointing but overall an important learning experience. If I had waited until my final models were ready to print before attempting the stressful procedure that is 3D printing, I would have been forced to face all these issues far to late for me to do anything about it.

Given what I have recently dealt with I decided it would be a good idea to do a basic sum-up of what I learned through the process, and write some guidelines for myself to follow from here onwards. Hopefully by following these guidelines I will be building my models in the correct way, and therefore have less problems when it comes to printing.
1 Million Triangles
This isn't flexible, the whole model must be below 1 million triangles to be printed. If a model needs to be bigger I can work around the limit by breaking the model into separate pieces to be printed.

Less Elements/Shells
Although this isn't a huge issue less elements/shells are apparently better when 3D printing. Also the model being in less chunks will make rescaling easier if its needed.

Detached Objects
No parts of the model can be detached or 'floating' from the rest of the model, this will result in immediate rejection for printing.

File Size
The submitted file can be no bigger than 64mb.

Wall Thickness
Walls of the models must not be thinner than 0.7mm. This is easily achieved by attention to detail when building the model and also careful design ensuring details are relatively simple and chunky. This aspect is much harder to fix later on down the pipeline so being careful of wall thickness during modeling will save a lot of time later. This can also be avoided by intersecting parts of the model where possible.  

 
Model Size
I need to decide on the size of each model early in the design process and build the model with this in mind. Altering the size of a finished model is difficult and can lead to spiraling printing costs.


General Careful Building
This includes various issues such as flipped faces, manifold edges and gaps within the mesh. These are relatively easy to fix with the program Netfabb but it doesn't hurt to try avoid these issues in the first place by building carefully and sensibly.

Following these guide lines should make the jump from modelling to printing much easier and reduce the chances of me being disappointed by my model not being suitable to print or having to remove details etc.

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