So what’s all that? That is my prusa XL printing a 3D model I made a while back.
So I modeled this thing quite a ways back, probably over a year at least. It finally was time to test it out with my new 3D printer. It needed a few tweaks, things like making it one solid object and slicing it in the software perfectly but overall it was the most ready to go model I had in my arsenal to test.
So the print was actually quite reasonable despite it being two separate colors. Luckily my new printer is equipped with five headers that can use all separate types of materials or just different colors. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to acquire the correct colors for this nondescript magnetic super person but I wanted to test it out either way.
You might be wondering what the crap is that looks like it’s growing all over the helmet. Those are called supports. Supports come in a wide variety of styles but these specific supports are called ‘organic’. Organic supports kind of grow from what I’m assuming is some kind of algorithm to actually print objects that are touching the base of the print surface. For instance if you were to print a table, a table legs act as a support for the entire tabletop, but if you were going to print that in 3D there’s nothing holding up the area between the legs because in 3D printing, unless the tabletop was printed separately, there’s nothing holding it in 3D space. So that’s where supports come in. There was a lot of support needed on the inside of the helmet as well as the base because of the arc shape of the helmet as well as the fancy level crest on the forehead.
So what’s the plan for next time? Well, I recently acquired the purple and maroon that is required for an actual, or somewhat accurate reproduction of the nondescript magnetic superperson helmet so we’re going to make it life-size! Unfortunately though, just measuring my skull isn’t enough so I’ve acquired some modeling clay to make sure that the dimensions required for this monstrosity to fit around my head will be accurate. Modeling clay shows up pretty quick here so hopefully I’ll be able to get started relatively soon!
-mike
