This week, we're testing our design limits for our printers, which includes supports, angles, overhangs, clearances, unsupported angles, bridging, wall thickness, dimensions, anistropy, surface finish, and infills!
Overhang, Clearance
Clearance - The ability for two parts which are printed close together to be able to move freely. Here you can see our machines clearance job, which it performs relatively well! Towards the ends, the clearance suffers a little and the squares get a little to close to the rods, but overall it's a good job!
Overhang - When a part has overhang, it means it has parts that hang over without a base, like a butress or an arch. Here you can see our machines overhang job, which it performs well with good organic supports.
Angles, Overhangs, Bridging
Angles - The ability for a part to be printed at an angle without supports. Here you can see our machines angle job. We printed several different angles to examine the exact point at which the machine needs supports. You can see it starts to fail around the 90 degree angle outwards, but everything until that point is pretty good.
Overhangs - The ability for a part to be printed with overhangs without supports. Here you can see our machines overhang job. We printed several different overhangs to examine the exact point at which the machine needs supports. You can see where it starts to fail around the center of the bridge.
Bridges - The ability for a part to be printed over another part without drooping or sagging. Our machine does a phenomenal job at creating bridges without supports, something which I did not expect it to do at all.
Wall Thickness - The thickness of the 3D printed part's shell. Here you can see that our machine does a good job of printing thicker walls but struggles when it comes to thinner walls. The thinner walls are not as strong and are more prone to breaking, but the thicker walls are very strong and durable.
Dimensions - The size of the 3D printed part. Here you can see that our machine does a good job of printing the dimensions of the part, and does so accurately. The part is the exact size it should be, and the machine does a good job of printing it.
Anistropy - The directionality of the 3D printed part's layers. We didn't have an image for this one, but we did talk about it using Dr. Gershenfeld's image.
Surface Finish - The quality of the 3D printed part's surface. Here you can see that our machine does a good job of printing the surface finish of the part. The part is smooth and has a nice finish to it.
Warping - The ability for a part to be printed without warping. Normally we do a good job of having parts that don't warp, but we didn't have any photos of them, so here is one of our failed parts.
Infills - The pattern of the 3D printed part's infill. Here you can see that our machine does a good job of printing the infill of the part. We have several different kinds of infills, but the easiest (and often best) done one is the grid infill.
Here you can see some failures, like the warping failure and the layer shift failure.