- My name's Tom, this is The Enthusiasm Project
and today I want to show you how to use
the new scribble feature in Tinkercad
to create 3D prints like this,
based on your own drawings, lettering,
handwriting, basically whatever you want.
The scribble feature lets you draw whatever you want
and then you can turn that into a .STL file
which you can then slice and send to a 3D printer.
So, it opens up an entirely new world
of what is possible with 3D printing
and I've really had fun trying to experiment with it
over the last month or so.
I've been using it a lot to do prints
that involve handwriting because
I've always been a really big fan
of lettering and hand lettering
and so this is a print that I worked on
to really figure it out
for Cody Wanner's No Small Creator community.
I wanted to send him one,
just as a thank you for being super supportive to me
and a bunch of people, especially with smaller channels.
And so I thought this would be really neat,
but to get this print to work,
it took so many tries and so much failed filament,
so that's what I wanted to help you guys with today,
so hopefully you can avoid those problems
and get to printing some really cool stuff
really, really quickly.
Now, I've actually been using
the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil
to do my drawings with the scribble feature in Tinkercad.
You can actually log in to Tinkercad on the iPad Pro,
just through Safari, it's kind of clumsy,
it's sort of hard to use, it's a little bit slow,
but the scribble feature with the
Apple Pencil is really, really fun.
You could also use a drawing tablet
and of course, just your regular computer mouse,
you don't need an iPad, you don't need an Apple Pencil,
you don't need a drawing tablet,
whatever you use to input into your computer
will work just fine.
Once I have the drawing done on the iPad,
I then go back into Tinkercad on the desktop
where I can then merge everything together
and figure out how the model's gonna come together.
So, even though you can use the scribble feature
to draw and design pretty much anything you want,
I'm focusing mostly on lettering
just because that's what I like.
For me, there's kind of a pro and con,
as I've been working on my hand lettering over the years
I've always had trouble drawing in a straight line,
so to fix that,
I just sort of make my letters bouncy up and down,
where they're kind of straight line,
but it works out really, really well,
it looks cool and then it saves me the pressure
of having to be absolutely perfect.
But the problem when I went to 3D print this
is that the way I've always done 3D printed letters
is to have the letters together
and then just put a rectangular shape
on the bottom to connect them
and that's the base of the stand
and it's a really cool, like, desktop or shelf item.
But when you're letters are all up and down,
they don't all necessarily touch that
and so it actually ends up looking really, really cool
because some for the letters are floating off of the base
and as long as everything is connected
at some point, you're good to go.
This was my first print where I really was trying
to figure out how to use the feature
and then what I wanted to do was print my own slogan,
which is Work Hard, Be Kind, Have Fun,
because I really like this and I want this
on my desk or whatever at work.
But, there's a lot more lettering here
and so (laughs)
you can kind of see, I don't know,
I can kind of bend it like this,
which is actually pretty neat.
The work and be words are only
connected to the top of the H,
this whole thing that says Hard, Kind, Fun
is only connected with the bottom of the F,
but it all balances out and it works really fine.
And if you look at the side of the piece,
even though they're only connected at those one points,
the fact that this is a relatively thick print
means that they're actually still really firmly connected,
they're not gonna pop off or anything.
And so when you're doing things with lettering,
you just need to make sure everything is connected
otherwise when you're done printing,
you're just gonna end up with
a bunch of separate letters all over your print bed,
which might not be what you want.
The scribble feature is really fun
because you can just print anything,
but it actually takes a little bit of finesse
to make sure your printer can handle it,
since you're dealing with a lot of human imperfection.
And the biggest problem I had when trying
to start printing these was that the print
just failed over and over again, even on the Prusa,
which I never have any trouble with.
The big issue on this print specifically
was actually the hashtag.
When the base went out towards the end of the hashtag,
I think there were just too many small, little parts
and movements in there for the printer to handle
and it kept messing up right here,
so that's why I actually just shortened the base
so that the hashtag is hanging off the end
in the air by itself and the rest of the letters
are all under the actual base piece.
Ultimately, what I had to do
was recalibrate the printer several times
until it really kind of nailed everything.
Even though it was printing other things just fine,
it was having a really hard time with these
and I think the reason is, at least with my handwriting,
there's so many weird, little points
and imperfections and curves and holes and stuff
that the printer was struggling with it.
This is almost like if you've
ever done one of the Benchy prints,
the little torture test tugboat to calibrate your printer,
this is almost like another version of that
because there's so many weird shapes
and imperfections that the printer has to cover
that in order for it to print well,
it has to be calibrated really well.
I'm currently running some of these prints
on the Monoprice Maker Select Plus as well,
and that seems to be handling it quite well,
but just like with the Prusa,
I had to calibrate and level out that printer
a couple of times before I had it ready
to the point where it would print successfully.
Once I throw these designs into Tinkercad
and hop back on the desktop, it's a pretty simple process
of just making sure everything is connected.
For the base, I just add in a square shape
and then elongate it into a rectangle
and adjust the thickness to whatever I want.
I personally like to make it
a little taller than the lettering
just because it makes it a bit more stable
when it's standing on display somewhere
and I actually like the way that it looks.
And so these are all designed to be printed flat
with no supports, no rafts, nothing like that there
so when you're done,
you pop 'em off the print bed and then you're good to go.
Once I have everything together in Tinkercad,
I just double-check that every letter
is connected to every other letter at some point
and then put on the elongated rectangle as the base
and then group the whole thing together
and export it as a .STL file.
Now, one problem that I had when I first started
printing the No Small Creator print
is I think my infill setting was too high.
I was making the print too dense
and I think that was causing some print errors,
so instead of doing 25 or 30% infill,
which is where I started, I took it down to 10%
and that seemed to make a positive difference
and then also it's still really, really sturdy.
On the Prusa, I haven't printed them with any rafts,
but on the Monoprice Maker Select,
I am printing them with rafts,
just to kind of see the difference.
I'm using Cura to slice it for the Monoprice
and I'm using Slicer to slice it for the Prusa,
but both slicers are giving good results.
And then the only other thing, really,
was to scale the print.
The .STL file is pretty small on the print bed
and so I scaled it up on the Prusa,
I think it 250% before it fit
almost the entire width of the print bed.
The larger the print is, I think the easier it is to print
because it makes all those small details a little bigger
and a little easier for the printer.
Pretty much any time you print,
you should always monitor the printer,
at least for the few layers to make sure
everything's off to a good start,
but I think that that is really critical
with these prints to make sure everything
starts going really well and then
continuously monitor and check in on your printer
to make sure that the prints are
coming out the way that they should.
So I hope this was helpful.
The scribble feature's been around for a few months,
it still kind of seems like it's in its infancy,
there's a few features I'd really like to see,
like variable line lengths, but for a free program
and for a really cool experimental feature,
I really, really love it.
So, I put links to both of these prints on Thingiverse
down in the description below,
if you want to download them and print them yourself.
I'll also put a link to Tinkercad down below
so you sign up, if you want.
It's totally free and it's online-based,
which makes it really easy to jump back and forth
between something like the iPad and your desktop.
So that's pretty much it.
I'd love to see what you guys
are doing with the scribble feature,
so if you have any ideas or links
or whatever you want to share with me,
please drop them in the comments below.
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already
and that's pretty much it.
I will see you guys next time.
(mouth popping)
(gentle electronic folk music)