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5.1 ‐ Printing Parts
In out lab we have a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon. On release it was a ground breaking machine capable of printing multiple times faster than the competition, while still having great quality. To get started with using it, you first have to get a 3D-model to print.
We use OnShape to create our models, and anyone that wants access to the models can ask the Mechanics team lead or Project Lead. To edit the models you will need a Education Account. Otherwise, you can only view it.
Be mindful of the way you design parts to be printed. The printer prints things layer by layer. This means that the part needs a flat surface (the bottom) to have against the build plate. This should be perfectly flat and have as mush surface area as possible. From this direction the part is printed upwards, usually called the Z-axis. The printer can't print overhangs sharper than 45*. If there are structures holding up the overhang at both ends, a overhang of 90* can be printed. This is called a bridge, and should not be longer than 3cm.
In OnShape, on the left under the Parts tab, right click on the part you want to print, and click Export. Under format pick 3MF. There are also other CAD programs available. A simple one that does not require that much CAD-knowledge is web-based TinkerCAD. If exporting from another cad program; stl, step, and obj are some of the common examples of formats that will work. 3MF (3D-manafacturing file) is an XML based format that is created for the purpose of 3d printing. It can contain print settings, thumbnails and G-Code.
After you have a model that you want to print, you need to slice it. This is the process of creating instructions that the 3D-printer can follow. It is called slicing because the program makes the model into slices, and creates a tool path of how to create that vertical slice. To start of download Bambu Studio. If you are using Linux other than ubuntu, Orca Slicer is fork of Bambu Studio that offeres Flatpak and Appimage binaries.
After opening mambu studio you will be greeted by a menu to select the printers you want to be able to use. We have a BambuLabs X1 Carbon with 0.4mm nozzle. For filament, the preselected filaments work. When in the slicer, notice the 4 tabs on the top of the screen. These serve different purposes during the slicing process, and shall be passed form left to right. In prepare you can import the exported 3D model. All modifications to the model itself, such as moving or rotating is done in prepare. This is also where you input the print settings into the tabs on the left.
On the top left of the settings the Printer and Buildplate can be selected. We have a 2 sided buildplate, with one side being the Cool plate, and the other side the Engineering plate. Under that filament can be selected. For general purpose printing use PLA and the Cool Plate. Under that we find the print settings. The dropdown has different presets, and bellow that the settings can be manually tuned. Strength and Support will be the most important settings for our use case, but feel free to explore further.
In strengh, the most important settings are Top/Bottom shell layers, Wall Loops and Sparse Infill density. The more walls you have, the stronger the print will be. The top and bottom layers should be more than, or equal to the amount of walls you use. For weak parts 2-3 is fine, will stronger parts you should have 5. Sparse infill is how much of the rest of the part is full, with 40%, 40% of the internal volume will be filled. For general printing 10-20% is good, while strong parts should have 40%. More than 40% is usually not necessary, there will be better effect to increase the amount of walls instead.
If you have a part that has the non-prefered Overhangs of over 50*, or a unsupported 90* overhang support materials can be used. Remember that it is always better to design parts that do not require supports. If you want to use supports, check the Enable box. After that, Type Can be adjusted. Tree works best for most cases.
With the filament, bad type, and settings decided you can press on Preview tab on the top of the screen to see how the prepared sliced file looks like. On the right there is a slicer where you can select each layer. You should take a look that there is no weird things happening, such as unsupported overhangs, that will cause the print to fail. The path of each layer can be viewed with the slider on the bottom of the screen. If you change any settings, pressing the icon of the model in the top left will cause the slicer to reslice the model. On the right you can see the amount of plastic and time it will take to print the model. When you have something that looks alright, it is time to print the model.