What Are You Printing Now? By Christopher Addy Before the kids can enjoy their 3D printed play set, decisions have to be made about the printer raft, orientation, and supports. Summer is in full swing, which means that it is time Then came the bucket/castle mold. Another simple for traveling, grilling out, and pool parties. Oh, the part, no special needs or attention really. This too pool parties! I have a fairly large immediate family printed without a hitch. and we’re slightly unusual in that we all love each other and get along quite nicely. My family summer holidays have always been quite the ‘to-do.’ For all the marquee holidays, we gather at my uncle’s house for a cookout/pool party. Being the oldest of nine grandchildren, I like to bring 3D printed things for the kids (and adults) to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ over. We have some smaller children still running around, so I thought it would be fun to print something for them to play with and keep them occupied while we adults float in the pool, soak up the sun, and imbibe libations. In my hometown, there is sand—lots and lots of sand— so I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to print than a sandbox play set. After poking around, I found a design of a simple sand play set that consists of a small shovel, rake, bucket/castle mold, and sifter. I fired up the Makerbot, loaded up some red filament (kids love bright colors), and got to printing. First came the rake. It was a simple part that didn’t require any support material when printing. I didn’t even need to use a raft for this one—just a bit of glue stick on the print bed, and it was good to go. 34 www.cadlearning.com With the sifter, I knew that I would need to take a bit of extra care, as the mesh on the bottom would be fragile. I doubled down the glue stick on the print bed to make sure the mesh of the sifter adhered to the bed well. I opted to not use a raft, as I didn’t want to run the risk that the part wouldn’t separate cleanly from the bed. Normally, I use a tool to pry the part from the bed. In this case, though, after the part completed, I took the print bed from the machine to the sink and gently washed the glue and the part from the print bed. The result was a perfect, non- damaged sand sifter.