November 30, 2024
Description
I'm glad I finished in time for the contest deadline!
| I designed a vase that not only has a silky smooth appearance but that can also be printed in three different ways, yet still without revealing an obvious seam. The vase is 20cm in height and roughly 15cm wide/10cm deep, but you can scale it according to your needs. | ||
| 01. Traditional Vase Mode First print option is the traditional vase mode. Use the “_universal.stl” file for that. It's pretty straight forward here: enable “Spiral vase” mode and set a desired number of bottom layers. Done. As with all vase mode prints (especially printed with 0.4mm nozzles) I recommend increasing the line width and also the extrusion multiplier by a bit. Setting “Infill/perimeter overlap” to something like 35% also helps to ensure that the walls and bottom layers are fully sealed. Print example on the left was done using 3D Jake's magic PLA Metallic Emerald and the vase was scaled down to 14cm height. | ||
| 02. Regular Print The second print option is printing it regularly with your desired number of perimeters. Use the “_universal.stl” file in this case as well. Just make sure to set the following. Top layers: 0 Infill density: 0% Seam position: Aligned Ensure vertical shell thickness: off With the seam position set to aligned the slicer will automatically place the seam within one of the creases as seen on the right. Or if prefered you can also paint on the seam position yourself. Either way, placing the seam inside one of the two creases will nicely hide it when looking at the vase from the front. Disabling the "Ensure vertical shell thickness" option will prevent the slicer from adding additional material along the inner walls in sloped areas. The print example on the right was printed in Prusament Viva la Bronze PLA, with the vase scaled down to 14cm height and with 3 perimeters. | ||
| 03. Dual Wall Vase Mode And as a third print option I created a special model ("_dualwall_vasemode.stl") which allows you to print the design in vase mode, yet with two walls. This could be desireable if you want the vase to have a thicker appearance but still have the advantage of consistent, uninterupted extrusion. Especially interesting if you use a 0.4mm diameter nozzle but find that normal vase mode leads to thin/flimsy looking prints. Having two walls also decreases the chance of ending up with a non-watertight vase. This design could also be interesting if you would like to experiment with more translucent filaments and see how light shines through the walls. While I tested this model only with a 0.4mm nozzle and the further described settings are based on that, the design should also work with bigger nozzle diameters. The distance between the two walls is 3mm. | ||
First, enable “Spiral vase" mode, set layer height to 0.2mm, and the bottom layers to 5. You can also print with a different layer height but just make sure that the number of bottom layers will cover at least 1mm of height. That is because the thickness of the bottom in this model is exactly 1mm. Scaling the vase up/down will ofc change the bottom thickness as well so beware.
Additionaly I highly recommend to increase the extrusion multiplier by about 0.05. So if your usual extrusion multiplier is set to 1.0, set it to 1.05. Doing so will ensure the wall perimeters will nicely overlap within the gap. Btw. I gave the gap this pointy shape on purpose because I've found in my tests that compared to a straight cut this reliably seals the gap and makes the vase watertight. I also increased the “Infill/perimeter overlap” to 35% so the outer wall nicely seals with the bottom layers… just in case. | ||
I highly recommend to test the print first before commiting to it fully. For that just move the vase down into the print bed inside the slicer until only the top edge is printed. Once you have done a print test, checked that the gap in the wall and upper edge is sealed/bonded nicely you print out the whole thing. | ||
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution — Noncommercial — Share Alike
Andreas Mass
