This week we had to design and print a 3D-model. For this, we used the software Rhino and the plug-in Grasshopper. I decided to create a flower and for this I partly used a Youtube tutorial, which you can watch here.

On Thursday we met in our FabLab and had a tutorial for Rhino’s plug-in Grasshopper. This tutorial taught us some basic commands for using Grasshopper. I had to leave earlier, so I did not see how to use the software “Cura” and how to prepare the 3D printer “Ultimaker 2+”. But because of that I decided to begin my design. For this, I searched the internet for parametric design and found the tutorial for a flower on youtube. I partly followed this tutorial, but because of the circumstances and possibilities of our 3D printer I could not do the open spaces between the leaves and had to extrude them, so that the 3D printer registers what he has to print. Very interesting about this tutorial were the commands I had to use, because they were so different than these we learnt on Thursday with Marc. I finished my design on Saturday because I needed help in one step. I decided to do only one layer of flower leaves because I never worked with 3D printer before and wanted to see a “simple” design. After finishing the design in Rhino and Grasshopper, I exported it as STL-file into “Cura” and prepared my flower for the 3D printer. On Monday I printed my flower on a flexible fabric. The settings I used are the following: Nozzle 0.6 mm (depending on your printer), material PLA, normal quality, layer height 0.3 mm, width 0.35 mm, Shell – thickness 1.5 mm, top / bottom 0.8 mm, Infill Density 20%, speed for flexible material, print speed 25 mm/s, travel speed 120 mm/s, tick the box of enable printing cooling, if you do not have to do not tick the support box (you need support if you want to print something “in air”), brim 0 mm, do not tick the enable retraction box. Then you save your object on a SD-card and start preparing your 3D printer to print your design. For printing I had to change the filament of the 3D printer because the one in it would not have been enough for my flower. I decided to take an orange flexible one and put it into the printer. For this you have to say the 3D printer that you want to remove the old filament and replace it with another one. The printer will heat up a bit and then start removing the fil by sliding it out. Then you have to say that you want to insert the new one. For this, you need oil and a piece of fabric. You use it to avoid that the flexible filament stucks in the engine of the 3D printer. After preparing the 3D printer, I could start my first 3D print. It lasted roundabout one hour to print my flower. Probably it does not work like it should because the textile does not stick on the textile. I think it happened like this because I extruded the flower by 3. I will print it again, but change my extrusion factor to 1.

Here a some photos of my week :)