PLA frogs with and without cooling fan (experiment)
PLA frogs with and without cooling fan (experiment)
Published 2017-08-03T13:02:03+00:00
Two of MorenaP's treefrogs 3D printed with and without the cooling fan.
In a similar manner as we did with the PLA blue frogs earlier, this time we wanted to visualise by comparison the importance of the cooling fan when 3D printing with PLA plastic.
For this purpose we borrowed MorenaP's popular treefrog for it's cuteness and overhang shape of it's belly.
The right frog was 3D printed with the cooling fan turned on and came out perfect from the 3D printer. For the left one we turned off the cooling fan. The result looks far from good even though it was exactly the same 3D model and 3D print file. The only difference is that the PLA plastic was left to cool by itself without the fan blowing cool air onto the 3D printed surface.
This results in unwanted distortions of the plastic shape after it is deposited by the 3D print nozzle. In other words, having a cooling fan makes all the difference!
If you want to try, disable the cooling fan by creating a profile in MakerBot MakerWare. Then edit it and make the following changes:
- Find the line containing: "doFanCommand": true,
- Change the word "true" to "false"
- Save the profile and 3D print the model.
References-
PLA blue frogs - Layer thickness comparison plate
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:69351
MorenaP's Treefrog
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18479
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By Creative Tools
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| Date published | 03/08/2017 |
