3D printing used to mystify me. From the (multitude of) software used to the actual printer itself, it all seemed so complex and tedious to understand. For the longest time, I resigned myself to accepting that it would always be out of my knowledge wheelhouse. I guessed it was just something only engineers and people in STEM would be knowledgable in, and that I'd be wasting my time trying to pick apart jargon and technical terms.
But after taking both OBDF210 and ODBF 310, I was surprised to realize that 3D printing turned out to be within my grasp after all. Using everything I've learned from both classes, it was a lot easier for me to connect the processes of creating a design in Rhino, using Grasshopper to convert it into gcode, and using pronterface for the actual 3D printing. Terms like feed rate and toolpaths stopped sounding like a different language, and I even understood it enough to contribute to the troubleshooting process for this project.
Although the shape of the toolpath is fairly simple, it helped me understand better how things like the extrusion of filament is affected by scaling, layer height, and the shape of the toolpath. Initially, the filament around the whiskers and nose of the rabbit was creating a mess because of how small my design was. Scaling it up solved the issue somewhat. But I might revisit this design again on my own printer and implement the suggestion I received of playing around with layer height and possibly excluding certain curves in my design to prevent the filament from bunching up in the center.
