3D Printing

 For my 3D printing entry, I was tasked to design and 3D print an object in Fusion360 that cannot be easily created subtractively, which briefly means that it cannot be easily created by other means such as laser cutting. As such, I have decided to create a circular (cartoonish?) frog face by layering multiple spheres onto each other. 

The design cannot be easily made subtractively as my design contains lots of curvature (eyes, face, mouth etc.) and thus it will take an extreme amount of finesse, time and skill to subtractively carve out this design perfectly. It will be much easier to create this design with 3D printing. 

Designing my object in Fusion360

So first off in Fusion360, I added parameters for the dimensions of the object. Below shows the parameters I added at first.

Then I added a sphere for the face with the dimension as "face".

Next, I added a offset plane with an offset of -35mm.

Using that plane, I created a sketch and made a 2-point rectangle that covers the entire sphere.

Then selecting that rectangle, I extruded the rectangle by 20mm to cut part of the sphere off.

After that, I created a XY plane with an offset of 10mm as shown below.

Using that XY plane, I added another sphere on the side of the face. The dimension used is "eye1".

To add the other eye, I used the "mirror" function under the "create" tab. Then I chose the YZ plane to mirror the eye.

After this, I made another XY offset plane with an offset of 10mm. Using that plane, I created a circle for the mouth.

Then I extruded the circle to cut off part of the face to create a mouth for the frog.

To make a hole inside the mouth of the frog, I made a 2-point rectangle using the same XY plane.

By right-clicking and selecting "move/copy", I changed the "Z distance" to -25mm to tilt the sketch and cut a hole in the mouth.

Then using the fillet function, I filleted the four corners of the hole.

Now let's get started on the eyeballs. I first created a XY plane with a 30mm offset to place the sphere.

Then I adjusted the eyeball until it is the position I want it to be. After that, I simply used the mirror function to copy the changes onto the other eye.

And that's it! The frog design is done! The HTML, f3d and stl files of the design is shown below!

f3d and stl files: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1PP3DmryoXPiVDKsdryIQOEKZfxQPa4Zy

HTML file:

Below shows the Cura settings I used for the 3D printing of my design.

I added supports as some of my design has overhanging sections, which helps these sections stay in place after 3D printing.

3D Printing

For 3D printing, I inserted my gcode of the design into a USB drive, which is then connected to a Creality Ender V3 3D printer. With the help of my senior stationed at the lab, all I needed to do was to select the design in the 3D Printer and it started printing.

3D Printing of my design

Final Product

Hero shot with object

Reflection

Overall, I found this activity to be fun as I am able to make use of my CAD skills to design something that I want in Fusion360. This activity also hones my CAD skills even further by giving me experience in designing an object.

For the 3D printing part, it was fairly simple thanks to my senior stationed at the 3D printer, who taught me how to operate the 3D printer. It was much easier to operate than I initially thought; all I had to do was to insert the gcode of my file into the 3D printer using a USB drive, press some buttons and the printer will start printing.

Fortunately, the 3D printing process went smoothly. The whole activity took less than an hour for me as the design printed came out exactly as I wanted and using the tools provided, it only took me a little bit of time to pluck out the supports. Maybe if I was given another chance to do this activity again, I would scale my design to make it bigger, in order to maximize the 1 hour I was allocated to 3D print. 

This activity has shown me how easy 3D printing actually is. By simply inserting my model from Fusion360 into the 3D printer, I can turn my design into an actual physical model. This activity has also given me insight on the standard procedure of operating a 3D printer and using the Cura software, which will be crucial when we complete other assignments in this module, such as 3D printing parts of a sterilizing door handle, which our group is assigned to complete.