Hi All

I thought I would post my 3d print experience with this model. Very cool to see a design come to life and the shape and dimensioning are good, however I have ended up with a course or aliased finish as the attached photos show. I exported my model to STL with 6 degree angles, just wondering if anyone could suggest what setting I actually should have used? Also its fairly obvious I did not make the tail thick enough and with the lack of detail it has actually 'faded out' and not been printed in places!

Of course the printer is a major part of the equation, however I have seen/felt some of his other prints and they are much smoother than mine even where curved.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated, as I'm keen to make this work.

Cheers, Brendan.

The faceting I see appears to be from the "printer" and not the STL. Maybe you could talk about "who you sent it to" or what printer was used. THis would help.

Good point, sorry!
It's printed on a Makerbot Replicator 2x by a local makexyz print guy. Thanks.

Hi Brendan,

As Burr mentioned it's not the STL file that is a problem, you can send the 3d print guy a super dense mesh and the end result will be the same.
This is a stepping phenomena that's common with 3d printing because the way the material is layered on step by step even with the Replicator with a 0.1mm (0.004") resolution.
The effect is more visible on curved areas, imagine a tiny staircase and it's more obvious on items with gentle curves such as spheres which your model shows.

Usually model guys will over size areas to allow for sanding to achieve a smooth surface.

There are other 3d printing technologies out there that will do a finer job unfortunately the price increases also. To get a better idea check out Shapeways they have variety of materials and processes to give you an idea on what's out there http://www.shapeways.com/materials?li=nav

Hope this helps.

Cheers

that part does not look like an STL printer part but a part from a Stratasys printer (or that type) that extrudes plastic through a modeling tip.

Is that part plastic or the actual laser / light cured resin of an STL machine? STLs, unless the machine is very cheap that is being used or very old, have much higher resolutions that what your part shows. The plastic extruder types give results that look just like the pictures you posted.

The first image (the close up) is what is drawing me to that conclusion. In my former career we had several machines that we used in-house and that looks just like the plastic extruded technology from Stratasys.

Are the red parts the cured resin but just painted? If so, the resolution on the machine that was used is pretty bad. A good machine and 30 seconds with high grit sand paper will make the cured resin parts smooth like a baby's bottom.

Hi Brendan, yes as others mention above the kind of layering effect that you're seeing there is a part of the printing process, there isn't anything you would do about that in the STL file generation itself.

If you've seen smoother prints from the same machine previously, it could be possible that the machine needs to be recalibrated or that there was some kind of post processing done on the smoother parts that you saw, like sanding, tumble polishing, acetone dip, stuff like that. You might want to ask him about what process he used on the smoother parts that you saw so that you could get the same thing done on your parts too.

It's really cool to see your model manifested in physical form!

- Michael