After a few smaller tests I thought I would get to printing something a little bigger, and this shark was a great test for the printer! He is printed in 3 sections, in 2 prints. Tail went first just to make sure it was all working ok, and then I printed the head and body on another print (but the two pieces were left separate). I’m very pleased with the results! Captured the sharp edges well. I just let the support settings be default because I’m still getting familiar with the printer, but I’m thinking I could have gotten away with less.
info:
50 micron setting
Tail took 8.5 hours to print 32 ml (I did not bother to hollow it)
Head/body took 13.5 hours to print 115 ml (I did not bother to hollow it)
modeled by me
Company credit and design: Dot & Effects
The model is primered… i ran out of grey after the tail, and switched to white… but then ran out of that too! So that’s what is causing the speckeled look. I only did a tiny bit of sanding to the tail edge where the supports were attached. But the other support areas I haven’t cleaned at all so you can see a bit of the marks still.
The upper fin had an error on the print where a long support stopped building half way through the print. The fin is supposed to come to a point. I should have printed the upper and lower fins separate with a connection but just figured I’d go for it to see what would happen. Also, it turns out that support was on the peel side so it had the most force on it. I should have had my print rotated on the build platform.
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Here’s a few pics from the process too…
Nice! Looks great! Thanks for sharing that. 
Very good print out!!
There are some skin color variant on the tail, does it affect the surface finishing?
that’s awesome! I wonder if you could have saved some resin by orienting the tail closer to the build platform — those look like some long supports
@jimmy: those little splotches on the tail did not seem to affect anything. The tail in that picture was fairly fresh out of the printer and bath, so as it hardened even more it all felt very even in the end. And the paint didn’t seem to stick any differently either.
@keith- I agree that printing it on it’s side could have saved on some build material and time printing. I test generated supports from all different angles, and when I had it on the side it meant there were a whole lot of supports connecting to the segments and all along the nice detailed part of the model. So I opted to have a cleaner finished print with less sanding and dings.
That looks awesome! Whether, it was due to spray paint running out or not, I think the 2 tone paint job and speckled detail on the face adds to the robotic shark look
I just recommended those same clippers in another support removal thread. How were they to use?
Also, are the two parts just press fit together or did you glue them? What offsets did you use for the hole and pins?
I just notice the supports did not grow very well. I guess the supports do not detach from the PDMS layer very well and cause distortion & irregular layer pattern. If this is true, hopes Formlabs can follow up. Thanks
@ Jason- yeah it does kind of add a cool effect! I’m trying to decide what color to paint it once I sand it all up! I love those clippers for cleaning parts, they have an angled edge to get in close to the model, and make a much cleaner break then snapping off pieces with fingers. Right now those parts are just being held together by hand, but I will glue them once i finish sanding and painting it. I just eyeballed the peg size down a bit, didn’t pay much attention to how much. The fit is a little looser then I would want, so next time I won’t do as much. Most of the experience I’ve had with 3d printing has been on a high end 3d systems machine, and I found that there was never really a universal scale that I could scale down a peg vs hole. The % gap needed would change depending on the actual size of the peg/hole. (1 inch peg needs very different % then 1cm peg) And in addition, I found that the angle the piece was printed at also required different sized spacing (for identical sized peg/holes) just because the printer is never really perfectly true.
@Jimmy: Yeah the supports got a bit wobbly, but the model part itself seemed to remain on model from what I can tell. I think in the case of this particular model (because it has such clear segments) I could have broken the model into more sections and printed smaller pieces. Then I would not have needed as many supports, and they would have been much shorter too. However, some models don’t lend themselves to breaking up into so many pieces so i could see where that could be improved. I do think that part of it is a learning curve for me the user as well. I probably had those long supports on the peel side, and could have rotated it to help it out. In addition maybe experimenting with fewer but thicker supports would be worthwhile. (?)
Here’s a test printing the shark at a few different scales to see how the details hold up. Overall I think it turned out quite well! It actually looks better in person, the photo is magnifying some of the imperfections. I filled in the mouth of the shark, and made the fins 1.5x thicker so that when the shark scaled down they didn’t become too flimsy.
(no sanding on those guys)
SO COOL. Can’t wait to get my Form1.
This is a really fun design too, did you model it yourself? Love me some robot fauna.
That looks really cool. What 3d cad design are you using?
I did the modeling myself using maya. The concept design was by dot effects studios, as the model was originally for a music video.