I first started out with the Flexible Filament made by NinjaTEK. My first reaction to this filament was noticing how flexible it really was. This attribute soon played into the settings of the printer. Knowing that this printing filament had unique properties I look on forums for others who printed int his filament and learned from them. The preset that I worked off of on the Prusa edition of Slicer, a software tool that converts stl files into printing instructions in g-code, was named ColorFabb nGen flex. Due to the flexibility, I changed the retention, meaning how much extra tension there would be, to zero. This modification aided in the printing process. In addition, the printing speed was slowed 45% and the temperature of the extruder was lowered from 250°C to 245°C which was the pre-set for flexible filaments in the Prusa. The first run through resulted in a good print, but there was lack of support between the joint connections resulting in some print error. I also recognized that the filling stuck to the bed after it was printed and I struggled to get it off the print bed.

For Science Symposium I decided to start to test flexfill and work on learning the needed software and hard wear to work the 3D printer. During this experiment I used Marn Academy's new Prusa 3D printer. This printer contrasts the MakerBot (which I was using before) in two major ways. First, the printer is able to print in a variety of plastics due to the fact that it has a heated bed, the base of the printer that the filament is printed on, and the different extruder. Secondly, this printer cannot be connected to remotely, you must transfer the files onto an SD card to upload the files to print and requires different settings and files for each filament. Due to these two major differences printing in the filaments proved to be an experiment in itself. I first started out with the Flexible Filament made by NinjaTEK. My first reaction to this filament was noticing how flexible it really was. This attribute soon played into the settings of the printer. Knowing that this printing filament had unique properties I look on forums for others who printed in this filament and learned from them. The preset that I worked off of on the Prusa edition of Slicer, a software tool that converts STL files into printing instructions in g-code, was named ColorFabb nGen flex. Due to the flexibility, I changed the retention, meaning how much extra tension there would be, to zero. This modification aided in the printing process. In addition, the printing speed was slowed 45% and the temperature of the extruder was lowered from 250°C to 245°C which was the pre-set for flexible filaments in the Prusa. The first run through resulted in a good print, but there was a lack of support between the joint connections resulting in some print error. I also recognized that the filling stuck to the bed after it was printed and I struggled to get it off the print bed (1a,1b). The next round for the flex print I added supports to the design (2) and added glue to the bed to aid on the removal, this resulted in a more consistent print. I added supports to the next design (3a,3b). This design allowed for a little less print error although the was still rough around the edges. This filament was very durable, easily able to bend to my needs. The design itself had some constraints on range of motion and the imperfect printing made the movement a little janky. I started to print the base of the hand but, the design stopped printing due to printer error and size concerns. I decided to just print the fingers and print the design itself in PLA to check and make sure the design is stable. The half printed palm also gave inside to the inner filling of the hand. I used the same printer settings for the base of the hand as for the fingers.