Why?

The body of Qin will be a complex connection of small sensors and actuators combined with some microcontrollers to control them. What goes great with microcontrollers? 3D printing. If the sensors and actuators of Qin are the senses and muscles of the body, then 3D printing will create the skin and bones. It will form the base that the sensors and actuators attach to and create a protective barrier between the delicate inner workings and the outside world.

3D printing allows you to create almost anything you can imagine, given you have the skills design it or someone else is kind enough to have already created a design that you can reuse. For Qin, I imagine I will mostly have to rely on the former as a fully fledged body suit is not something that I’ve found readily available online.

I have absolutely no experience in either 3D design or 3D printing so I’m going to have to learn how to do both if I stand a chance of creating Qin. Today I’m going to start my journey into 3D printing.

Getting started

I have absolutely no patience when it comes to purchases, maybe this will change as a grow more, for now 30 minutes is about the maximum amount of time I can spend researching something I want to buy. I took this same approach when deciding what 3D printer to buy, I knew nothing and didn’t fancy learning before one was on its way to my house. To start I read through PC Magazines review of 3D printers and settled on the Creality Ender-3 S1 Plus due to the large print size (30cm x 30cm), then I saw the £399 price tag and decided to find something a little cheaper.

I was looking for something that was cheap and reliable, I didn’t need it to be super high end. Most of what I would be doing was experimenting with prototypes and fiddling around learning how everything works. I read tech radars review of the Creality Ender-3 V3 SE 3D which seemed to be a fast, reliable and simple to setup/use. At the time, it was around £180 which seemed reasonable to me for one of these magical machines.

Research

Now that the printer was on the way I got to work learning a bit about the theory behind them. I read this article What is 3D printing? as a quick introduction to some of the terminology and basic principles. The following is a summary of my findings.

There are essentially 4 basic steps to 3D printing; modelling, slicing, preparation printing.

Modelling

This is the process of creating an item that you wish to print in digital format. There are many tools to do this, probably the most famous one is blender. These tools allow you to create 3D models using tools on a computer, imagine paint but in a 3D format. You can create anything you would like and the 3D models produced can be used in things like 3D games, simulations and in our case 3D Printing.

Slicing

Once you have a 3D model the next step is slicing, this is the process of breaking down the model into layers. These layers can then be “drawn” by the printer sequentially to eventually create the 3D model. You can imaging this process as the printer repeatedly placing single 2D layers on top of each other until it eventually builds the 3D piece. Thankfully software can automate this slicing process. There are many companies that can do this process automatically, for our Creality printer the manufacturer supplies the Creality print platform. You can simply upload your 3D model and it will automatically slice the model up into layers that your printer can handle.

Assembly (one time)

Once slicing is complete you are ready to start working with the actual printer.

For reference I’m only going to speak about the printer that I’m working with going forward as printers vary.

My printer came requiring assembly, this was relatively simple. I followed the instructions that came in the manual (if you go to the website, it also gives more in depth instructions). Following the steps in the manual worried me, it involved putting the printer on its side while screwing in different parts. I realised that the printer is actually quite robust, for me putting the printer on its side caused no damage, it was more important to make sure the screws were in tight so that the printer was stable.

Preparation

The first thing that needs to be done once the printer is assembled is levelling the base plate. The base plate is the sheet of material that the model is actually printed on, in our case it is a 220mm x 220mm piece of metal. Turn the printer on and it should begin attempting to auto-levelling itself.

Levelling involves the printer taking multiple measurements of the distance between the nozzle and the base plate. If all of the measurements are similar this means that the base plate is “level” (the plate is close to parallel to the the plane that the nozzle operates). If these measurements are not perfect it is not an issue, there is usually some imperfections, though the closer the better. My printer came mostly level so I’m not sure what you would do if it wasn’t, a followup post will probably answer that.

Once our base plate is levelled we need to prepare the printing material. The printer comes with a spool of PLA (Polylactic Acid, a plastic commonly used for printing), following the instructions in the guide, cut the filament at a 45 degree angle to prepare it. Turn the printer on and go to the “prepare” menu, from there select the “extrude” option. Follow the on screen instructions. Summarising them; press the tab down insert the filament into the Extruder Kit (the box the nozzle is attached to with the “Creality” logo) and press the selector to confirm. When I did this some of the PLA came out of the nozzle, I just wiped this away with some kitchen roll.

Printing

You should now be ready to print as long as your printer is hot enough. There is an indicator at the bottom of the display that will tell you the temperature of the nozzle, if it is not select “preheat PLA” from the prepare menu and wait for it to heat up to the correct temperature.

Generally this involves moving the sliced model from your computer to the printer it varies per printer but for the Creality printer it can be done via SD card (that comes with the printer) or by connecting a type C-Cable. The SD comes with a “cat” model already on the SD card, you can simply insert the SD card and go to the “print” menu. Select the model and start printing. I left all the settings exactly as they were.

I sat there for an extended amount of time, sort of astounded that it was actually working. The printer arm moves much quickly than I expected but due to the number of layers it still takes an extended amount of time to complete the prints. It took me about and hour and a half to print the example cat that was on the SD card. Honestly watching it print still mesmerises me after the first print, as Arthur C. Clarke said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic“.

Conclusion

This has been my first experience of 3D printing, I honestly couldn’t ask for more. I can’t quite believe that it actually works and I own a device that can do this. It feels there are almost infinite possibilities that could come from this, I’m very excited for the future. The first idea that I have is to create the exoskeleton for the augmetic hand that I’m trying to build. Thank you all for reading and good luck if you are beginning on your own 3D printing adventure!