State of the art, project management and documentation¶
1. Objective¶
I tried to play around with a few different machines and tools in Fab Hub Kendall this week. Including laser cutters, DTF printers, and 3D printers.
2. Tools¶
Software
3. References, research & inspiration¶
My highlight learning for me this week was supports in 3D printing
Why
FDM printing builds an object one layer at a time. Each new extrusion generally needs enough material underneath it to support the molten filament.
How
The often-mentioned 45° rule is a useful starting point, but it isn't a universal physical limit. The printable angle depends on layer height, nozzle diameter, material, cooling, speed, geometry, and printer calibration.
What
Support generation is almost a design process of its own.
This is an experiment in printing an entire robot-arm - I'm going to ROSCON in Toronto next week, and thought this would be a cute swag.
The model is particularly challenging because it contains many mechanical features: holes, horizontal surfaces, articulated-looking components, narrow gaps and complex geometry.
- Model can be downloaded here
The slicer therefore generated a substantial amount of support underneath and around the model. The print succeeded, but I had to spend so much time removing the dense support, which actually led to breaking some real parts. Some of the supports were trapped between relatively small features, making them almost impossible to remove.
I also made a batch of small acrylic robot-arm pieces for ROSCon Global 2026. I used xTool Studio to prepare the job and found the workflow surprisingly easy to learn. Importing the artwork, positioning it on the material, and assigning different operations to the geometry was very visual and intuitive.
4. Not yet finished¶
Will keep updating - coming back for more documentation
