3D Printing
3D printing (a.k.a Additive Manufacturing) is now pretty well established in industry as a prototyping tool, and is becoming more common as a process for creating finished custom or low-run parts. In the home, printers can be a marvelous tool for solving practical household problems for example by repairing items, or creating new items that are fully customised for their position or use case.
The process of 3D Printing
Get a digital 3D model (by downloading or making one)
Slice it (use a program to generate instructions for the printer)
Print it (and troubleshoot it)
Post-process it (remove support material, clean up areas, paint etc)
Material Choices
When you are just starting out with FDM 3D printing PLA is the recommended choice. It's very easy to work, relatively strong, with and comes without many of the safety concerns of other materials.
Slicer software
I will be using Ultimaker Cura which is a free, open source and highly customisable software for slicing of the 3D models to prepare them for printing.
Type of printer
I will be mainly using the Ultimaker 2+ as it is the one that I'm familliar with.
Printing out my designs
For the first design I've printed, it is the nametag which I designed. I printed it out using the skirt setting and normal infill.
For the second design, I printed it out with brim setting and normal infill and also with supports as I've realised that there are some overhang with the design.
