BLENDER 3D PRINTER SERIES

duplicate geometry, perhaps left over when pressing E to extrude a face, thereby creating a new face, but then deciding not to pull it away after all and then deleting only parts of it or none at all.

vertices or edges which are not connected to any faces, perhaps left over when deleting vertices but missing some.Many of these issues come under the heading, non-manifold geometry, or geometry which cannot exist in the real world. Luckily Blender has tools to help with that too. Other things which may confuse a slicer are usually more problems with the mesh which arenвЂ™t visible or are inside the part. Thickness вЂ“ This is a section which may be too thin to print, perhaps a thin wall.In the example shown, I made a knob by simply jamming a cylinder partway into the side of vertical face such that one end is inside the mesh but not connected to it. Intersect вЂ“ This is where one section of a part is inside another section.These can be flat but they can also be distorted such that different sections of their face point in different directions. Distortion вЂ“ A three-sided polygon will always have a flat surface but Blender supports polygons with any number of sides, called n-gons.

Sharp вЂ“ These are edges or points where faces meet which may be too sharp to print well.

Other issues available by clicking on the Type dropdown are: The areas in blue, however, can be fixed by increasing their angle as measured from the horizontal. The red area is the bottom of the part and will be sitting on the print bed so it wonвЂ™t be a problem. Here weвЂ™re showing it highlighting overhangs, anything in the range of 0В° to 45В°. Some of this is done through the Mesh Analysis panel in the Properties region (the area on the right in the 3D View which you bring up by press N). But Blender can also show you these things, allowing you to fix them before getting to the slicer and thereby avoiding going back and forth between the two programs. Slicers will often highlight a few issues with your part such as if a section of it hangs out in mid-air with no support under it. For example, Shapeways has instructions for people creating STLs from Blender for uploading to them.

Some of these steps may vary depending on your slicer or if youвЂ™re using a printing service. My printer is the Crealty CR-10 and my slicer is Cura 3.1.0. IвЂ™ll be using the latest version of Blender at this time, version 2.79b. Note that the same may apply to other mesh-type modeling programs too, but as Blender is the only one IвЂ™ve used, please share your experiences with other programs in the comments below. These are the techniques IвЂ™ve come up with for preparing parts for 3D printing before handing them off to a slicer program.

BLENDER 3D PRINTER SERIES

Our already talked about making parts in Blender with his two-part series ( here and here) so consider this the next step. And the real world is far less forgiving, as IвЂ™ve found out with my own projects which use 3D printed parts. Slicers require something which makes sense in the real world. 3D models drawn in Blender work great in a computer animated virtual world but donвЂ™t always when brought into a slicer for 3D printing.

Blender 3d printer