How is this 3d Printed? Slinkies

[hercemer]

These were all printed in various brands of ABS on my Up Plus 2 at default settings w/ a z-index of 20mm (I click open and print). You can quickly print a few test coils of the heart to see how the support prints and how the coils separate.

There really isn’t any support to remove when they’re done, at least not like you would think.

It varies by the size of the gap between coils but is either almost nothing or is single strands if tiny little hairs.

If the gap is optimal I get coils that I can separate easily and I am left with little support between them. Easily in this case means gingerly running an x-acto knife between the coils, occasionally popping a coil loose. The support between the coils consists of small, sporadic squares of support that you can scrape away with a thumbnail or even ignore.

If the gap is too tight I really have to work to separate the coils and am likely to break one. These have no support so if you can separate the coils you’re ready to rock.

If the gap is too loose I can easily separate the coils by pulling on them. The trade off here is that you make up that time by scraping tiny little hairs of support off of each…and every… single coil.


Here’s a close-up of the large round slinky. The arrow points to where I used acetone to join 2 slinkies.
AqZf2et.jpg

The top part was printed with tight coils that were very difficult to separate (I broke it twice).

The bottom part was printed with loose coils that were easy to separate, but are not as clean as the tight version. I printed this out more than a week ago and am still picking away at the support.


While I’m talking about joining slinkies…

I broke the pac-man slinky (the one in the thingiverse pictures) while I was separating it. I was able to fix it by covering both ends in acetone and pushing them together overnight. I used x-acto blades to keep the acetone off the other coils.

Since that worked, I’m trying to make a really big “large circle” slinky.

Here’s a coil I’m joining –
G1ck8Bi.jpg

That looks like a pretty big gap, I might have to cut this one and try again (it’s still drying).

Here’s the whole thing for scale –
mp48kLb.jpg

That’s 4 slinky chunks acetone’d together (since some broke). I got a little sloppy, but it’s possible to make a seamless join.

I’m hoping to have a slinky that can walk my entire stair case, or at least look cool on my desk