Blog 4 (Practical 5)

Practical 5

This is where I will be documenting the whole process of 3D printing the egg drop case. I feel that this is by far the biggest project that we have done in the ICPD module and it definitely felt like a milestone after finishing the final product.

When we were told that we needed to design and make a device that enables a raw quail egg to survive, with no cracks, a fall from a height of 2 meters, I am sure that everyone in our class was shocked. However, Dr Noel shared with us a device that his students made to enter a competition and that device earned them a spot on the podium. They won some money too! This made everyone much more enthusiastic about this practical and we got to researching immediately for inspirations for out designs.

My group consist of Tristan, Samantha and myself and here are the 3 ideas that we were contemplating on trying out:

The twirler

FIXED

and CapsulEgg

However, we ended up with our final design.

The design that we decided consists of the outer case, the inner case and the legs. I was in-charge of designing the legs, Samantha designed the inner case and Tristan designed the outer case.

Guide for making the legs

Step 1: Make a sketch for a circle

Step 2: Extrude the circle

Step 3: Make a sketch for a rectangle

Step 4: Ensure that the width of the rectangle is negative such that it ends up below the extruded circle

With the above steps, you should achieve something like this.

Converting the 3D model into an STL* file

Converting the 3D model into an STL file is really simple and can be done with a few mouse clicks. 

Step 1: Move your mouse to the left dropdown list and select the body of the 3D model.

Step 2: Right click and select "Save as mesh".

Step 3: A dialog box will then appear on the right side of the screen and select either STL(Binary) or STL(ASCII) under format and click "OK".

*STL:Standard Tesselation Language

Preparing the Gcode file for 3D printing

We will be using Ultimaker Cura slicer to prepare the Gcode.

Step 1: Select the 3D printer that you will be using. The 3D printers available in the ICPD lab are Creality Ender 3 V2, Creality Ender 6 and Ultimaker S3.

Step 2: Click on the folder icon and find the STL file that was created earlier and open it.

Step 3: You can then modify things like the speed at which the model is printed, the infill density and provide support for your model. In this case, I used a 5% infill density and the standard printing speed.

Step 4: After making the necessary changes, click on the "X" icon on the top right corner to close the dialog box. Click on the "Slice" button and this will tell you how long it takes to print and the weight of the filament needed.

Step 5: Insert the SD card into the laptop and save the file to the SD card.

Preparing the 3D printer

Preparing the 3D printer consists of these few steps:

-Turning on the machine

-Loading the filament

-Increasing the nozzle temperature and bed temperature.

Removing the print

To remove the print, we must first wait for the temperature of the bed and the model to decrease. This allows us to remove the model more easily. There is also a spatula-shaped tool that can scrape the model off the bed of the 3D printer. 

Fusion 360 models

Legs

Top part of the outer case

Bottom part of the outer case

Inner case

Hero shot and videos

On the day that we all finished printing our models, we finally managed to combine them all together and to our surprise, the egg magically survived!🥚 It felt like a sense of accomplishment and we were all very proud of our work. There is also proof that our egg is raw.

Reflection

This practical was really fun to take part in and I felt that my group already did their best and our efforts paid off as shown in the video. However, in future practicals I believe that we will learn from our mistakes and do better!