What Are You Printing Now? By Christopher Addy By breaking a design into smaller pieces for assembly, even a traditional desktop printer can create big, bold models. E verybody loves lighthouses. Beacons of safety Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The only problem was that the original model only stood 9.5 inches tall. in the night, guiding you home in tumultuous waters. Emblems of towering strength and light. So But I wanted it bigger, twice as big, to be exact. Going big, however, presents certain challenges. symbolic. The print inherently uses more material, increases Okay, maybe not everyone has experienced that the chance of failure, and tall parts are notoriously much sentiment for lighthouses, but I’ve always difficult to stabilize during the printing process. had a fondness for them. So when I got the Complications aside, I was up for the challenge. hankerin’ to start a new project, something just clicked in my head: I wanted a lighthouse. And not just any lighthouse. I wanted a detailed design that I could assemble and light up. But not just any lighthouse would do; this one must be a step above the rest, and for that, I chose the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. One of the most recognizable lighthouses in the world with its black-and-white spiral stripes, the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, standing at 208′, is the world’s tallest brick lighthouse. I wanted my model to be a decent size too; no tiny (light)houses here! 28 Instead of designing the lighthouse from scratch, I turned to Thingiverse. This free, open source site is full of great designs that anybody can download and print. As I had hoped, Thingiverse did indeed have a design of the www.cadlearning.com With a finished height of more than 18 inches, the model I envisioned was too large and complex to complete on a standard desktop printer. When working with a model that is larger than the build volume of your printer, the best solution is to divide the model into pieces. While some assembly is later required, the result is definitely worth it. After printing a few of the smaller parts, I was confronted with the fact that, even when broken down into smaller pieces, the tower section of my design would still be too tall to print on my printer. So I enlisted the help of my friend Jerry, who owns a Stacker 3D printer, which boasts a build volume of 10"x18"x24" - all the height I would need.