3D Printing With Prusa

Looking for a “Christmas present for the family” I thought a 3D printer might fit the bill.

It was this YouTube video that persuaded me:

Best Cool Things to 3D Print in 2022

a still from the video

And in particular, I was surprised by how mechanically intricate the prints can be, with interlocking and moving parts. So, I bought one of these:

Prusa i3 MK3S+

the printer

And have been slowly learning what it can do.

Getting Started

We eagerly searched the Thingiverse for fun prints:

Thingiverse

a print from the thingiverse: articulated human figure

And started figuring out how to design our own.

I found a simple way to build 3D models via the online tool Tinkercad:

Tinkercad

my Tinkercad creation: stackable “twist together” discs

While this was more than sufficient to get started, I found myself drawn to the much more sophisticated Blender:

Blender

my blender creation: articulated chain

After using Blender for a while I became interested in the possibilities of programmatically generating models. I was pleased to find that the STL file format is extremely simple, and I could easily write code to generate them.

I’ll share more about designing models, including code, in a future post!

Impressions

Being used to creating software, I really enjoyed the mix of on-computer and real world provided by 3D printing. You use powerful computer-based tools—but in the end, what you print has to deal with all the limitations of the real world, including working out how far you can push the limits of the printing process.

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