Fusion 360 and 3D Printing

Introduction: NC state Article

Before even touching the computers, the first thing we did was read an article on one of the uses of 3d printing.

https://www.camal.ncsu.edu/2020/09/04/manufacturing-and-medicine-team-up-to-save-dog/

This article shows how 3d printing was used to save a dogs life. It says they used a type of filament that was safe to go in the body and got the part made in under a day. It also says that they designed the 3d printed piece to look as close as possible to the natural part it was replacing. This shows how 3d printing can help save a life, and if it worked for a dog it can probably work for a human.

Part 1: Lego Design

For the first part of learning fusion 360, we have to make a Lego brick that has the right designs to work with other Legos

To start of the lego, I designed a box in the sketch and then extruded it out to the right size

I then made the top left circle and mirrored it so that it would copy itself 7 times into the right position

I then went to the bottom of the circles and used the shell tool add the 8 dots, and used those dots to find where to put the left big circle and did a sketch on the bottom of the lego and extruded it up.

I then used mirror similarly to the dots above to evenly space out two more copies of it.

In the end, I use fillet on the top circles to make them have rounded edges, and I was done
this Lego piece is able to be used with other Lego pieces thanks to the careful measuring of all the parts I made as I went.

Part 2: Book Holder Design

For the next part, we have to design a thing to hold open a book, it requires the use of constraints and more advanced sketching

I first started by making one line that curved

I then mirrored the line around the green and blue lines, and filleted it to give it the round corners. I also made a center point circle in the middle to fit my thumb

I then extruded that sketch into the 3d

I finished off by filleting the shape and extruding my name into the piece

This part was probably the most confusing to make, as I had to rewatch the video a lot to understand what he did and how to mimic him. I also couldn't go back in the sketch for part for the images for this, so the first image is a recreation of what it would look like

Part 3: 3d Printing the Lego brick

Next we got to choose on of the pieces to print, I choose the lego brick because I thought it would be cooler.

After we designed the two pieces above, we got the option to 3d print any of them. I choose the Lego brick since I read all my books online so I didn't need the book holder. the 3d printers at latin all are connected to the internet, making them really easy to print on

workflow and related images

Make your file more compatible with 3d printing (less overhangs)

Export your file as an stl format

Take that stl into prusaslicer(file -> import -> stl/obj/others)

Select the right print settings (smaller mm = more detailed/slower)

Turn on supports (have them all unless you feel very certain you wont need them)

Slice (bottom right)

Export gcode (bottom right)

Open up octoprint and take your printer

(Go to printer)

Use isopropyl alcohol on the print bed and wipe it off

Go back to your computer and set the target temperature to pla (180 nozzle /60 bed)

Go back to the 3d printer and use tweezers to take out any of the plastic that got pushed out when it heated up

Once it has heated enough and is clean, start printing.

Watch the print for a bit to make sure it doesn’t fail

Get the part once it has printed, remember that the bed is magnetic and can be taken off

bad to print due to the overhang

You should turn on supports in prusaslicer and keep the infill around 15%-20% to keep the parts strength good enough

set PLA to start heating the 3d printer to the right heat

IMG_0038.MOV

Video of the 3d printer printing the brick

good to print

if you click on the down arrow button you can set the heat to PLA defaults

Here is the brick after it was 3d printed

the 3d printing process essentially uses very small layers of plastic that layer on top of each other to add up over time to make something like this. as the layers get higher up, they are more prone to oddities like the M trying to become a H and the S getting deformed.

Part 4: Thingiverse Design Modification

The final thing we did in this was modify a file from thingiverse.

For the final thing we designed in autodesk, we took a design off thingiverse and then modified it in some way. The original design is green and I modified it to make it have one extra compartment. I couldn't modify the original directly so I recreated it as closely as I could, I'm particularly proud of how close I got the copy to the original.

We learned after I did the recreation that you could turn the original into a model, I just did those and here's a comparison of the original turned into a model and my recreation

I didn't encounter any problems because I have used the 3d printers in the fablab enough times for me to be very comfortable for them and fusion 360 is a very good tool that I understood quickly.

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