Our newest 3D printer is the Ultimaker S5. We purchased it in June of 2019. It’s very similar to the Ultimaker 3 Extended we’ve been using for a few years but has a larger build volume and a much larger, easier to use interface.
Material: Open platform, can print most available materials (PLA, ABS, Nylon, PETG, PVA, flexible TPU). We print mostly with PLA and use PVA as support material if needed.
Dual Extruder: can print in two colors on same part or one color with dissolvable support material (PVA). Extruder temperature range is 180-280
PVA support material is water soluable and will completely dissolve after soaking in water overnight.
Heated Bed: improves adhesion for almost all materials, range is 20-100°C
Build Volume: 13″ x 9.5″ x 11.8″
Minimum Layer Thickness: 20 to 600 microns per layer using print cores with nozzle diameters of 0.250, 0.5, and 0.8mm.
This printer is open to use by anyone at Reed (students, faculty, and staff). I have plenty of PLA filament ready to go so you just need a file and a desire to print to get started.
I just got the Ultimaker 3 Extended set up a week before the holidays but I completed two prints before the break.
The first print I did was a standard 3D printing benchmark, #3DBenchy. It came out really well, much better than the one I’d made earlier with the Makerbot. Here’s the Ultimaker 3 print (white) next to the Makerbot print (red), both in PLA:
The Ultimaker print looks better in many ways although the comparison is a bit unfair given that white is pretty forgiving while glossy red isn’t. Continue reading “First prints with Ultimaker”
I was approved via capital equipment request to purchase a 3D printer this year for the fab space. I haven’t yet bought it because we’ve been using a Makerbot loaned to us for a year by one of our faculty.
It was great to get to use the Makerbot since I’d never done any 3D printing before. I feel like I have a much better sense of our needs now and am more comfortable choosing the right printer for our applications.
This printer was just released earlier this week and looks like it is the one I’ll get.
Ultimaker has long been known as a reliable, consistent performer in the high-end consumer grade printer market. Their new release appears to be targeted even more toward professional use. It includes some cool new features (like dual extrusion) which, when paired with the reliability of their printers, makes it a great machine for school use.
It’s not the highest tech machine out there but it’s a good performer with a lot of usable features. Unless something new appears in the next month or so we should have one here before the end of the term.
While drawing your own parts using CAD software and printing them out is amazing, there are lots of things you can download and then print without having to draw anything. These sites have a combination of free and purchasable files that you can choose from.
Our Ultimakers work with .stl, .3MF, and .obj files so look for those first but it’s possible to convert other solid model file types (like files from Fusion 360 or Solidworks) into a printable file fairly easily.
We’ve used the 3D printer to make all sorts of things but the bulk of what we’ve made has something to do with science or math.
An older post discussed 3d printed meissner tetrahedra and I’ve made more of them but smaller and in blue filament. The first photo shows them as they’re being built. You can see how the printer deals fills internal space of a solid object with a certain amount of infill. You can set the infill from 0% (open space) to 100% (solid plastic). This is about 40% infill.
Tetrahedra under construction. You can see the raft they’re sitting on and the infill filling the void inside the shapes.
Many of the parts we’ve made on the 3D printer so far have been ones we’ve downloaded, not drawn ourselves. Given the huge number of 3D printer files available online it’s always good idea to check a few sites first to see if someone’s already gone to the trouble to make up a file for the part you want to make so you don’t have to draw it up yourself.
Here are a few of the many sites where you can find files to use with 3D printers. Since the 3D printers we have use .stl files look for that type of file first but it’s possible to convert other solid model file types (like files from Fusion 360 or Solidworks) into .stl files fairly easily.
Thingverse – I always check here first. Models usually work great on our printer.
GrabCAD – most models won’t be in .stl format but there are many more engineering-type models here than on Thingverse
Turbosquid – never used it but appears to have lots of models, lots aren’t free though
stlfinder – search engine for .stl files, uses above sites plus others
I was contacted by Prof. Kyle Ormsby in the Math Department a while back about a project he was working on with his new 3D printer, a recent-generation Makerbot. The idea was to create a few “bodies of constant width”. A sphere is the simplest body of constant width but it turns out there are others as well.
Here’s the requisite link to the Wikipedia paragraph on Meissner Bodies. There are lots of cool things about these objects and this video really sums a lot of it up. The cool thing is that they can act like ball bearings even though they’re not round.
Kyle wanted to make a few of these objects on his printer but it turns out that drawing them up into a 3D model is relatively complex. I’ve been using Solidworks whenever I have the chance to help visualize projects or assemblies and it turns out that it’s great for this application as well.
Unfortunately I haven’t had the time (and I’m not sure I’m even capable given my level of Solidworks competency) to draw them up but the internet giveth in the form of GrabCAD, a site that hosts lots and lots of free CAD models the people have drawn up and posted. As you can imagine, someone had drawn up some surfaces of constant width and posted them.
Meissner Tetrahedron from SW file drawn by GrabCAD user that I opened up using Reed’s Solidworks License.
