In an effort to help our clients envision our designs Innova bought a Flashforge Creator Pro 3D printer. 3D printing technology is still at it's infancy. This printer reminds me of the old pen plotters. It has two nozzles that extrudes melted plastic along a 2d plane. The base plate then moves down a layer and it forms the next layer. There are a couple different types of plastic you can use in these types of 3d printers. We are currently using ABS plastic. 3d printing is an art that takes practice and knowledge to master. Not every object is ideal for this type of 3d printing. An ideal object will have a flat surface to use as a base and no overhangs. If your object has overhangs you can still print it, you just need to use support material and cut it off afterwards. To learn about 3d printing we decided to start printing objects that others have designed.
This cup is our very first 3d print. It is a sample file that came with the printer.
The next thing we printed was a telescope to Canon dSLR adapter. This is two pieces that screws together. It is really tight so we decided to try more threaded items.
Then we printed some wingnuts and bolts. These are fully functional that the wing nut screws onto the bolts. The heads of the bolts printed at the bottom. During this phase we were still having problems with the base distorting a bit. You can see this in the photo.
The latest sample piece we printed is called Cool Gears. This shows multiple pieces that go together. We printed it so that each piece was a different color.
