4 ms·
I printed a huge batch of connectors to make a 15ft structure out of plastic
- dezork 9y agoThere's a more detailed tutorial on how to use physics to do 3D part packing here: http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Stochastic-Part-Packing http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Stochastic-Part-Packing
- danwinkler 9y agoI made something similar a while back! Took somewhere between 150-200 hours to print 60 connectors. I had to design the parts with a flat side so I could print them in PLA. https://danwink.com/blog/2016/06/19/dowel-structure-with-3d-printed-connectors/ https://danwink.com/blog/2016/06/19/dowel-structure-with-3d-...
- dezork 9y agoCool! I love it.
- donquichotte 9y agoNice! I also loved your tool cart. https://danwink.com/blog/2016/09/17/toolcart-with-3d-printed-joints/#more-175 https://danwink.com/blog/2016/09/17/toolcart-with-3d-printed...
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoUgh, what's with these obnoxious buttons? https://sr.ht/S3w1.png https://sr.ht/S3w1.png I'm so tired of endless barages of SUB TO OUR NEWSLETTER and LIKE US ON FB and TWEET THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PLEASE on every goddamn website.
- rtkwe 9y agohttp://imgur.com/a/O10RH http://imgur.com/a/O10RH Looks fine and unobtrusive on Chrome. Seems like your browser is rendering things weird, what are you using?
- ljcrabs 9y agoUsing physics simulation to pack parts more closely together is such a good idea. Nothing like a little shake to get things packed together.
- Animats 9y agoThis works well only if your manufacturing process produces an isotropic material. SLA sort of does; it's equally strong in all directions, but there is a layering axis. Filament-welding printers don't have that property. The material is much weaker in the layering axis, because the welding between layers isn't very good. Things have improved somewhat, but strength of things made from ABS filament is much lower than the same part made by injection-molding ABS.
- jacquesm 9y agoIsn't that offset in this case because those connectors have elements protruding at many angles? You'd be weakening some and strengthening others, unless they were designed with a particular print orientation in mind.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat part packing using a physics simulation is genius, very clever. I did some nesting of fabric long ago, never even thought about doing it using a physics simulation. Lovely stuff. Of course in nesting fabric there are a lot of constraints due to weave orientation (especially in that application, sails for boats), presumably this 3D printed stuff gives you at least a bit more freedom though I would not expect it to be equally strong in all directions. Even so, the parts they made are already challenging that because of the connectors protruding from all angles so presumably the re-orientation due to packing will not make the parts much less strong.
- dezork 9y agoSLS parts aren't substantially weaker in the Z direction like your typical FDM parts are.
- askvictor 9y agoHere's a SketchUp plugin that lets you make large objects using plastic bottles and 3d printed connectors: https://hpi.de/en/baudisch/projects/trussfab.html https://hpi.de/en/baudisch/projects/trussfab.html
- eggy 9y agoI use FreeCAD and Blender for a lot of my technical design/engineering work. I am happy to see a physics solution in Blender that seems suited to the task of filling the volume with the parts. I like the fact that you can use Hylang to program both Blender and FreeCAD via their Python APIs. No need to, I just like Lisp!
- alvern 9y agoVery cool approach to scaling a project out of small components. I wonder if the print time is 144 parts in 36 hours or 36 hours per print. Thats 15 minutes a print if it is the former!