Happy Friday! I hope you have missed me?…Well, anyway…I’m back this week to bring you a few really cool articles that I have stumbled across within the last two weeks. In today’s topics, I will bring you an article that reminisces of Gumby, a great article that you will definitely want to tuck away for future reference, and a new technology that will likely revolutionize the 3D printer.
How many of you remember Gumby? I imagine at least a few. How many of that few remember the old Gumby toy that could be bent into different poses? It was a rubber figure with a wire frame and you could bend him around into many different shapes? Well, if you are printing with a flexible material you should look at this technique of pausing your print, inserting a thin metal wire, and continuing the print. It may come out just like the flexible Gumby from yesteryear! Wiki Filimprimante3D has a great demonstration video of the process and result. Now, what figure do you want to print and pose? Maybe, Hilary? Maybe, George?…Get-RRRR Done!
Are you familiar with the term Infill? Does it ring a bell? Well, in Makerware there is a setting for you to control the infill which is the amount of plastic that the printer puts inside of an object when it’s being printed. 100% infill would suggest the item is solid plastic. 50% would imply about 50% full or empty. 0% would be hollow. With that said, one might believe that strength is a linear factor of infill. Ie. if an object were 50% infilled it could be 25% stronger if it were reprinted at 75% infill. Not so! This article brought to you by the website 3D Printing Industry conducted a study and rendered a cool chart that tables different infill % and layer heights with a descriptive requirements table. It gives you a general idea of strength, quality, cost, and speed vs. infill and layer height. I keep this chart handy on my computer desktop for quick reference!!
The best for last! A new revolutionary 3D printer has been quietly developed and will likely change the 3D printing industry if the technology can be brought into an affordable range. As compared to current 3D FFF printers it prints 25 to 100 times faster and does it in a way that is straight out of The Terminator! You have to watch the video to believe it’s true! You can read the entire article here!
I hope these articles will give you a few things to ponder. If you have any suggestions please leave a comment or send us a link to the article you find most interesting and we can share it with everyone! Until next week, happy printing.
