![](/w/images/thumb/6/61/Luke_Portrait.jpg/300px-Luke_Portrait.jpg)
I am a soon-to-be graduated college student with strong leadership and communication skills. Experience in a marketing, accounting, and sales, and business roles. My main focus is within marketing and process/operations streamlining.
When it comes to the Open Source Movement, I am a huge fan of the innovation aspect of the concept. Space is the limit and there's no saying where the advancements in technology might take us. The main reason I'm attracted to the OSM is because of the opportunities that might present themselves both in business ventures as well as lucrative solutions for social problems, either of which I would love to be a part of.
By building a JellyBox, RepRap printer, I was able to see first hand just how available the resources are in this movement. Additionally, I was able to see the entire movement become a physical product as a plugged in my printer for the first time. Whether it is prototyping future products for my own business ventures, or a company I work for, I see great value in the opportunities 3D printers will bring myself and everyone else. [[Category:242-2017 People]]
MiniMech Project[edit | edit source]
In this project, I'm using everything I've learned to make the highest quality print and what print parameters I think will yield the strongest test coupon. We were given an STL file and it was up to us to decide what print parameters would create the strongest coupon.
The parameters that I decided to test were: - type of filament - print speed (walls and infill) - layer thickness - print temperature
My first prints were the horizontal and (2) vertical coupons made with the Crystal filament. I was hesitant to use this, and doubt that it will be the strongest filament, but also feel there's a small chance it could be very strong. It is a mix of various other materials and PLA in order to achieve a slightly translucent look. With previous test prints, the Crystal filament seemed to stick/string together much more, so I figured a higher temperature would be required, hence the 220 and 230 degree print temperature. Additionally, I felt that a slower speed was required here in order to allow the vertical coupons to be printed accurately.
My second prints were done with SainSmart PLA white filament. This seemed to me to be a much more consistent and reliable PLA color and format. There's not translucent properties to it, but there is a stigma in the printing community that white is more difficult to print with. This was my best bet when it came to strength. Two of my coupons I printed with a .3 layer thickness and my final print with a .4 layer thickness. I felt that the thicker the layers, the more structurally sound it is even though it may lack detail. I printed a horizontal and vertical coupon at a speed of 100 for the infill and 60 for the walls and did a final horizontal coupon at just 80mm/s, figuring this was a good middle ground, as well as a slower speed to allow for a stronger .4 layer thickness print.
Overall, I feel that...
- white PLA will perform better than the Crystal Blue PLA
- slower prints will be stronger
- layer thickness of .3 will be stronger than .4 or .2
- and, of course, the horizontal test coupons will be much stronger than the vertical
TEST RESULTS Here are the print parameters and results:
Summary:
- The horizontal, White PLA coupons beat out everything in terms of overall strength (withstood 193 N of force)
- The vertical, White PLA coupon performed the worst out of all coupons
- The vertical Crystal Series PLA coupons performed the best with the vertical prints
- A slower print speed for both filaments resulted in stronger coupons
Conclusion
A thicker layer height seems to directly correlate with strength of the coupons. At a .4 mm layer thickness, a horizontal coupon withstood 193 N of force. At .3 mm, 183 N horizontally and 98 N vertically printed. At .2 mm, 153 N to 168 N. I would have adjusted my predictions now to guess that the Crystal Series PLA would perform better as a material for the vertical coupons. It actually outperformed the horizontal coupons of the same material. Now, it was only one sample of the vertical, so it may have just been a fluke that it outperformed those two. Yet, it still held up the 168 N. I believe that this may be due to the higher temperature that I used to print the Crystal Series PLA. Because it had its translucent properties, it came out a bit gunkier and less melted at lower temperatures, inspiring me to raise the temperature. When it printed the vertical section of the coupon, I feel like the higher temperature allowed for more bonding between the layers. This seems to be very important because that is the stress point of the test and the adhesion there is minimal considering how small these coupons are. Finally, slower prints are key. I think even slowing these prints down to a range of 30-50 mm/s would have resulted in drastically stronger coupons. Additionally, as with the Crystal Series PLA, a higher temperature range for both materials also may have resulted in stronger coupons.
Projects[edit | edit source]
Picture | Title | Describe something else |
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Various prints | Some of my first prints |
The printer! | In all it's glory | |
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Celtic/Viking Mashup Project | [YouMagine Project Link] |
Cover for Sensitive Switch in Optics Lab | For Science Equipment Project | |
Cover for Sensitive Switch in Optics Lab | [[Source Files: NIH 3D Print Exchange]] |