Safaribot, Redux (RIP?)

Post date: 05-Apr-2012 00:38:34

More mixed news - my Shapeways print arrived, but when it did, the box looked like this →

...you can imagine my disappointment - UPS, for shame.

To my surprise, though, the damage was relatively light - the main chassis was surprisingly solid, and thus unharmed - it was only two of the legs (which, admittedly, we're extremely thin and fragile) that were damaged - one weakened in two places, the other snapped through in one.

So now my desk looks like this ←

...as I conduct repairs.

Important lessons include:

Shapeways aren't kidding - thin prints are problematic to say the least. Frustratingly, I think the legs would have looked better made thicker, but there's some things you can't tell 'til you're holding the finished product. Which is really the whole point of rapid prototyping technology like this.
Interlocking pieces should be designed with actual margins - 3D printing is an additive process (unlike, say, laser-cutting, where kerf actually shrinks your pieces) so components are more likely to be too big than too small - margins should be added to compensate.
Blender's boolean modifiers worked really well for both throwing the legs together really fast, and hollowing out the chassis - favourite feature so far. :)

All in all, though, I couldn't be happier. Although the perceived risk was much greater (Building something in 3D versus 2D, shipping from the other side of the world versus other side of the city, or from NZ) I feel like this tops all my laser-cutting experiments in terms of success. In terms of cost versus reward, I think I can count myself a convert. :)

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