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Every time I see a 3D printing project like this, I experience a mix of disappointment and hope for further progress. If the finished result is going to look so

Every time I see a 3D printing project like this, I experience a mix of disappointment and hope for further progress. If the finished result is going to look so rough and unfinished, it's just not for me yet. If, in order for it to look good, I need to carefully sand the result and account for that sanding in the initial design, I might as well take up woodworking. Sanding is laborious.

criddell 6y ago
The PLA print isn't any good, but the SLS print looks great IMHO. I don't think they needed to do much sanding on it at all.
fdsafaeds 6y ago
Yea screw scanding, but I tthink you've got to accept that this is always going to be prevalant purely down to how 3d printing works. Acetone vapor chambers are where it's at, closest you'll get to a injection moulded piece without doing the injection moulding.
- PacketPaul 6y ago
  Acetone will only work with ABS which has another set of issues. Reducing the layer height and a coat of paint will accomplish almost the same thing using PLA.
PacketPaul 6y ago
This is a bad example. The layer heights are too high. Look at thingiverse.com for examples of what you can do with a 3D printer.
- russh 6y ago
  That's is my take as well, the PLA print is of poor quality.
Damogran6 6y ago
There are better and worse examples of FFF printing. The current heavyweight printers from Creality, while being some of the cheapest you can buy, have been dialed in to the point they can make amazing output. The problem here is that you're zooming in on a 1x2 CM part...It's like taking a 12 Mpixel photo, then looking at a 320x200 size part of it...it'll still look pixelated.
Symbiote 6y ago
I just bought a 3D printer, partly for fun, partly as I want to print some mechanical keyboard cases. I've only printed a few things so far. Some board game tiles are perfectly smooth on the "top" (they were printed face down), and the very slight texture on the bottom makes a nice pattern when it reflects the light. The bottom texture is as coarse as a typical cotton fabric, but hard not soft. In other words, I can feel the texture, but it's even, like rubbing a pebble. I also printed some chess pieces, which are essentially cylinders. The texture is visible, but completely consistent all the way up each piece. If this battery door really does show the "limitation of an entry level 3D printer" then I'm very glad I spent a bit more money. I still know very little on this subject, but while choosing what to buy I found tutorials on building a printer from parts for €100 or so. This reminds me of the first print from something like that, before the expert showed how to correct the worst problems.
ajuc 6y ago
I've had the same objections and was waiting for prints with resolution so high you can't see layers. But this year I had some time and money to spend so I bought a cheap FDM 3d printer and honestly it's good enough for most uses. Depending on the material, color, lightning and size of the part - usually you don't even notice the layers, and in many cases even if you do it doesn't matter. For example I've printed big boxes for our bikes out of black PLA and they look fine - you wouldn't see it's 3d-printed unless you stare at it from 1 meter under good lightning. And when you need a different finish you can always paint it. I've printed about a dozen plant pots of different sizes because my wife bought 10 ceramic pots and liked them very much and couldn't find similar ones anywhere. We painted them and they look identical and you don't see the layers under the paint. I don't even print with the smallest layer size possible because it takes too much time and difference between 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm or even 0.3 mm is negligible in practice, but the printing time scales almost linearly. Depending on what you use it for YMMV.
nicpottier 6y ago
These aren't very good examples of what is currently possible using a decent FDM printer. (Prusa Mk3s for example) While not beautiful, PLA prints are pretty darn smooth and surprisingly strong if you orient the print in the right direction. (you don't want to stress the part on the axis of the layer stacking) I bought one a year or so ago and while definitely still in the "toy" category, you can do some neat things with them. That said, woodworking is going to let you build way nicer things, but you don't get to just click a button and have it reproduced, nor share plans with others. But ya, FDM doesn't print things that are "nice" really, just functional.
jwr 6y ago
FDM 3D printing like you can do at home, is a toy/hobby. It's great if you want to spend the time fine-tuning your printer and dealing with all kinds of brokenness, and get a mediocre result at the end. To get good results, upload the files to a service like Shapeways and use their hugely-expensive SLS printers. You'll get your printed stuff in several days and the quality will be great.

criddell 6y ago

The PLA print isn't any good, but the SLS print looks great IMHO. I don't think they needed to do much sanding on it at all.

fdsafaeds 6y ago

Yea screw scanding, but I tthink you've got to accept that this is always going to be prevalant purely down to how 3d printing works. Acetone vapor chambers are where it's at, closest you'll get to a injection moulded piece without doing the injection moulding.

PacketPaul 6y ago
Acetone will only work with ABS which has another set of issues. Reducing the layer height and a coat of paint will accomplish almost the same thing using PLA.

PacketPaul 6y ago

This is a bad example. The layer heights are too high. Look at thingiverse.com for examples of what you can do with a 3D printer.

russh 6y ago
That's is my take as well, the PLA print is of poor quality.

Damogran6 6y ago

There are better and worse examples of FFF printing. The current heavyweight printers from Creality, while being some of the cheapest you can buy, have been dialed in to the point they can make amazing output. The problem here is that you're zooming in on a 1x2 CM part...It's like taking a 12 Mpixel photo, then looking at a 320x200 size part of it...it'll still look pixelated.

Symbiote 6y ago

I just bought a 3D printer, partly for fun, partly as I want to print some mechanical keyboard cases. I've only printed a few things so far. Some board game tiles are perfectly smooth on the "top" (they were printed face down), and the very slight texture on the bottom makes a nice pattern when it reflects the light. The bottom texture is as coarse as a typical cotton fabric, but hard not soft. In other words, I can feel the texture, but it's even, like rubbing a pebble. I also printed some chess pieces, which are essentially cylinders. The texture is visible, but completely consistent all the way up each piece. If this battery door really does show the "limitation of an entry level 3D printer" then I'm very glad I spent a bit more money. I still know very little on this subject, but while choosing what to buy I found tutorials on building a printer from parts for €100 or so. This reminds me of the first print from something like that, before the expert showed how to correct the worst problems.

ajuc 6y ago

I've had the same objections and was waiting for prints with resolution so high you can't see layers. But this year I had some time and money to spend so I bought a cheap FDM 3d printer and honestly it's good enough for most uses. Depending on the material, color, lightning and size of the part - usually you don't even notice the layers, and in many cases even if you do it doesn't matter. For example I've printed big boxes for our bikes out of black PLA and they look fine - you wouldn't see it's 3d-printed unless you stare at it from 1 meter under good lightning. And when you need a different finish you can always paint it. I've printed about a dozen plant pots of different sizes because my wife bought 10 ceramic pots and liked them very much and couldn't find similar ones anywhere. We painted them and they look identical and you don't see the layers under the paint. I don't even print with the smallest layer size possible because it takes too much time and difference between 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm or even 0.3 mm is negligible in practice, but the printing time scales almost linearly. Depending on what you use it for YMMV.

nicpottier 6y ago

These aren't very good examples of what is currently possible using a decent FDM printer. (Prusa Mk3s for example) While not beautiful, PLA prints are pretty darn smooth and surprisingly strong if you orient the print in the right direction. (you don't want to stress the part on the axis of the layer stacking) I bought one a year or so ago and while definitely still in the "toy" category, you can do some neat things with them. That said, woodworking is going to let you build way nicer things, but you don't get to just click a button and have it reproduced, nor share plans with others. But ya, FDM doesn't print things that are "nice" really, just functional.

jwr 6y ago

FDM 3D printing like you can do at home, is a toy/hobby. It's great if you want to spend the time fine-tuning your printer and dealing with all kinds of brokenness, and get a mediocre result at the end. To get good results, upload the files to a service like Shapeways and use their hugely-expensive SLS printers. You'll get your printed stuff in several days and the quality will be great.