3D Printing Entry

In this 3D Printing Entry, I finally got to be able to use the 3D printer to produce my desired design that cannot be made easily by substractive manufacturing methods. Substractive manufacturing refers to the process by which 3D objects are constructed by cutting material away from a solid block of material. I decided to make an "impossible ball in a cube" as my desired design. It cannot easily be made substractively because it is difficult to cut a sphere into the cube that is able to roll around in the cube. Here is a picture of an example seen online:

Figure 1

To be able to produce this desired design, I used Fusion360 to design it before I am able to 3D print it. I followed a design made online by another person which looked similar to what I wanted. Here is the link to the steps made by the person: https://www.instructables.com/Impossible-Object-With-Fusion-360-Box-and-Ball/

Following the steps, here is how I did it myself:

Step 1: Create a 25mm by 25mm cube on the XY plane

Figure 2

Step 2: Create a 32mm diameter sphere at the origin as a new body 

Figure 3

Step 3: Select the Sphere and position it into the center of the Cube

Figure 4

Step 4: Cut the openings of the cube by modify>combine and select the Cube as the Target. Select the Sphere as the Tool and Cut as the operation to cut the openings.

Figure 5

Step 5: To resize the sphere, make a new copy of the sphere and resize the copy. This is to prevent the change in size of the Cut area because Fusion360 has linked the body to the Cut operation applied to the Cube. I decided to decrease the diameter of the cube to 28mm.

Figure 6

Step 6: This step is to trick the slicing software into thinking that the Box and Sphere are one object. To make the contact point of the objects flat on the printer's base plate, raise the sphere up by 1.5mm and create a connecting bar which is 0.1mm x 0.1mm x 12.5mm that is connected from the center bottom of the cube to the center bottom of the sphere. Combine the bodies and rename it to "BoxBallbyFirman:1"

Figure 7

Figure 8

Here is the final look of the 3D object that I made:

Figure 9

Link to .f3d and .stl file: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yQ31S-DiXXYS90pi2hJwAjQlFZRXPrNN?usp=sharing

To be able to 3D print it I used an application called Cura which is a 3D printing software. Here are the default settings that I used in Cura before I 3D printed the object:

Figure 10

Hero Shot:

Figure 11

Individual reflection:

In this 3D printing practical, I got to learn how to make a 3D printed object that cannot be made substractively, use a 3D printing software called Cura and how to 3D print. It was a very fun and interesting experience as it was my first time trying out 3D printing and seeing the object being printed layer by layer. While setting up the settings, I had difficuly changing the type of printer to be used to 3D print. Because of that one of the helpful technical executives had to help me. After 3D printing, I felt that knowing how to 3D print would definitely help in designing objects that would be needed in the future project where I would be making a product along with my team. However, I will still need more practicing with 3D printing seeing how I had difficulty changing different settings to suit my final product and duration of the 3D print. That is all for this entry. See you again after the holidays!