Introduction: When Words Fail--3d Print 'em

8 Nov 2022 has been a pretty memorable day. It's not often that 58 million of your fellow citizens can let down you wholly at in one case. Having shared my astonishment on Twitter, I felt corresponding I needed to sum up my feelings in a fashion that I could avoid having to rehash details, but truly got to the core of how I was touch sensation.

A plaque seemed like a slap-up idea. At the office tomorrow, when a fellow worker might approach me with a 'hot take' on the previous results operating theatre even a measure of gloating from a sub-set of my colleagues (to protect their identity, I will just call them "D'Plorable"), I could silently shake my head and maneuver to my new signboard.

Hence, the WTF plaque was conceived. LET's reasonable accord that WTF stands for What The Fromage.

Symmetrical if you aren't experiencing an existential crisis, I'm showing you a way to use Fusion360 to create a 3D printed sign. Now my printer has a pretty small print bed and a couple of letters work just fine within the space that I had available. Conceivably, you could reduce the size of the letters and get a bite much chatty, but I should think that less is Sir Thomas More.

Step 1: Starts With a Sketch

Having just participated in an Instructable course/webcast on 3D printing process, I started a new design in Fusion 360. Autodesk allows students, hobbyists, and SMBs to use the program free of charge as lifelong as you make to a lesser degree $100k a year (http://www.autodesk.com/products/unification-360/endeavour-bu...

That is a nifty handle. I had been using 123D Design, another Autodesk mathematical product, soh many of the concepts transfer over.

At this point in time I need to confess that while I was trying to work out a portion of the build that just wasn't working, I deleted my originative sketches. I've tried to recreate them as very much like possible, simply there may be whatever minor differences.

I created an ellipse in a resume. I chose dimensions based on my print bed, so your setup may need to be attuned to reflect your printer.

I didn't want to make the sign very coagulable, but I added a raised edge to the oval to give the model more stability and reduce the likelihood of the print warp away from the print bed. I exploited the branch tool to create a border of couple millimeters.

Step 2: Create the Base

I extruded the thin border that I just created 2mm and that created a raised ring.

That realised, I selected the shopping center portion of the oval and extruded it just 1.5mm. This completed the base.

Gradation 3: W Then F Then T(ish)

From the sketch options, I selected 'text' and positioned a 'W' on the face of the plaque. To suit into the oval of the plaque, I hard the char superlative to virtually 50 and found a font that seemed like it would make an interesting financial statement (the face is called chalkbuster).

The next pictures papers generating the letters. If you are wondering why I did the letters one at once, apparently the 'T' causes Coalition to throw a 'tool error'. Something like that at least. Not really helpful. After I had tested to dress 'WTF' several different shipway, I finally figured out that it was the 'T' that was causing the erroneousness.

Maybe the sketch for the 'T' doesn't create a closed loop? Someone will probably clear it up in the comments.

Anyways, I made my own 'T' from the '|' and '_' symbols. I had to shell them a trifle so the kerning worked stunned.

I extruded the letters 3mm. I wanted them to stand out, only I could have probably found time in the photographic print cycle if I had chosen something smaller

Gradation 4: Use Cura to Generate the G-code

With my model out-and-out, I used Coalition 360 to export the plaque as an STL and then strange that into Cura.

Cura is the official slicer for the Lulzbot Mini that I'm victimisation. There is no good reason wherefore I birth the layer height set to .15 mm. It is the setting that I have been using for my other project (world-wide gear exploitation herringbone gear mechanism profile) but I would have carved an hour off the print time if I had gone with .4 mm.

Cura does a amercement line of work of generating g-code for the 3d printer. I undergo experimented with Slic3r because it gives more control over margin overlap, voids and infill, but I haven't got the recipe right to equal what can get from Cura.

Step 5: Printing process With Octoprint

With the g-code compiled, I only had to upload the completed file to the Octoprint server and wait twice as long-range every bit required for the job to print. I'm using ABS here because that is what I had on the undulate.

I wanted to dumbfound the text to put u out, but I rushed the finish a bit and just grabbed a Sharpie to color in a background. You preceptor't get the chalkboard impression from the font but I might have been able to do a better job with something with a more precise tip than a permanent mark to get in around some of those details.

Step 6: Epilogue

I'm happy to report that the WTF sign functioned as desired.

My boss walked by my door, saw the gestural, pyramidal and lifted an eyebrow. Every last I had to do was nod and grimace. He gave me the 'whatcha goin to do' shrug and our conversation was complete without having to say a word.

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