3D Printing

3D Printing#

We use 3D printing both in the deisgn prototyping stage and also as a construction technique.

This guide focuses on the first use of 3D printing as a deisgn testing tool.

Getting started#

There are lots of great videos for this. We are using Blender / Bonsai for this tutorial. This just contians some notes that might be useful to you to get you started.

There are 3 things to watch for when preparing your 3D models for printing.

  • Remember that your 3d print will probably be scaled - most of the time we are not printing at 1:1

  • 3D printing data can be provided in STL (mesh) or STEP files

  • If mesh we can boolean them together, which can be useful

  • If STEP we can see the different parts in the slicer software.

Blender navigation#

If you are new to this, save yourself a lot of trouble and turn on rotate around object.

Edit -> Preferences -> Navigation -> Toggle on: Orbit Around Selection

To Blend or IFC#

Either way if you safe your buidling model as an IFC or Blend file you will lose information when we starting doign teh boolean operations - so its probably betys to save a version of you model as a .blend file to prepare the 3d printable STL file. modre ifo here - https://docs.bonsaibim.org/guides/troubleshooting.html#incompatible-blender-features

Boolean Tool#

Edit -> Preferences -> Get Extensions -> Search for and install: 3D Print Toolbox

Shortcut: ctrl+shift+numpadplus

Blender 3d print checking#

Edit -> Preferences -> Get Extensions -> Search for and install: 3D Print Toolbox

Export scale#

In the blender STL export window you can scale your print to fit on the bed with the following units.

  • 1:250 - 0.004

  • 1:200 - 0.005

  • 1:100 - 0.001

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