- I needed something to hold my dry erase markers,
and I've been getting a lot of questions lately
about 3D printing, so I thought this would be
a good opportunity to walk you through the entire process
of modeling, slicing and printing in 3D.
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Now, something like this
is pretty easy to go buy at the store
because it's really just a piece of plastic.
But, part of the fun of 3D printing is
not buying cheap plastic at the store.
You can design and model things to suit your specific needs
plus you get to go through the actual process
of making something.
It would also be pretty easy to find something like this
on one of the sites like Thingaverse or MyMiniFactory
where you can download 3D models for printing.
But, it's also really fun, when possible,
to design your own prints, especially if they're practical.
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And even though this is a very simple shape,
the reason that I waned to design it myself,
is because I wanted to make sure it held
the exact number of markers that I needed,
and that it would fit in the exact spot
that I'm going to mount it.
So where do you begin?
How do you take an idea like this from your head,
and bring it into the physical world?
To do the actual measuring, I just used
some digital calipers I got at Harbor Freight
for pretty cheap.
And basically these just open up so you can measure
different elements and see exactly how big they are
in millimeters.
Once I measured the markers and the door,
then it's time to actually design the holder
in a 3D modeling program.
So if you don't know where to begin,
I recommend tinkercad.com,
which is an online-based CAD program, 3D modeling program,
which is great because it's very easy to use
if you're brand new,
but if you have a little more experience,
it does have some pretty advanced features as well.
Another benefit to Tinkercad is that it's online-based,
so you can log in from any computer
and continue working on your designs.
And it's really easy to share them as well.
Now, just some of the very basics.
There's a work plane here you can rotate
to see the different dimensions:
top, front, right, and left sides.
And pretty much any design you make in Tinkercad
is going to evolve from the use of
some combination of shapes.
Solid colored shapes are solid objects.
These ones that have lines in them are holes.
They're essentially negative space.
So for what we need to create today,
I'm gonna start with just a box.
The color of the box doesn't matter,
because the color of the final object
will be determined by whatever filament we end up using.
This just needs to be the size I measured
based on the markers, so this is the actual size
of the marker holder.
And that's pretty simple.
I just need one side to be 20 mm, which it is already.
I would like the other side to be 105 mm,
and then for height, I would like it to be 88 mm tall.
It's a big rectangle.
And this is the size of the space
where the markers need to go.
The problem is that this is a solid object,
so if I print this, it's just going to be
a solid, rectangular object,
and it's not going to do anything.
So, what I'm going to do is click on this object
and then duplicate it.
So now, I have two of them.
The second one, I'm going to make slightly larger.
So, instead of 20 mm wide,
I'm going to make it 25 mm wide.
And instead of 105 mm long,
I would like to make it 110 mm long.
So now it's bigger in every dimension, except height.
Instead of 88, I'm actually going to make it
a little smaller, and I'm going to make it 85 mm,
and I will explain why in a second.
So now I have these two shapes, which are very similar,
but ones a little bit bigger than the other.
I'm going to take the first shape, the smaller one,
and I'm going to change that from a solid to a whole.
So now that's negative space, and if I move that
over the second object,
you can see it actually cuts out space in that object.
That's why the second object was a little bit bigger,
because it's essentially creating the shell
that's going to hold this negative space,
'cause this is the size of what needs to hold the markers,
but this is the size of the shell
that actually needs to be the physical object.
The reason I didn't make the second shape taller
was because I wanted it to actually be a little shorter
than the negative space,
so that way it will cut off the top
and allows you a spot to put in the markers.
Now in Tinkercad when you're moving objects around,
you can just drag them with the mouse,
you can move 'em with the arrows,
you can change the way the grid works,
you can snap to grid, you can turn that off.
If I were to try to line these up by hand,
it would probably be kind of a maddening experience,
and I don't feel like going totally insane today.
So, I'm going to select both of these,
and I'm going to click this align tool,
and it's gonna give me the option to align
via the center dimensions.
And so now it doesn't matter what angle I'm looking at,
both of these shapes are aligned perfectly
based on the center.
So right now, since both of these
are resting on the same plane,
the negative space is interacting with the solid object,
and that means this is just gonna be a tube.
It's not going to have a bottom
to actually hold the markers.
So I'm gonna take the negative space
and just drag it up a little bit.
So I ended up raising it just by about 3 mm,
and now if you look, you can see inside
there's going to be a bottom to this container
that kind of matches the side.
It's not real scientific.
I just want it to be thick enough to be strong.
And the way I got this double transparent view,
was just to turn the outer later also into a hole.
So I'm gonna switch that back to a solid.
Now the solid is filled with a hole.
If I select both of these,
and click group,
it will combine them into one object,
and now this is what our print
is pretty much gonna look like.
It's a very simple shape,
but it's pretty cool.
Now that we have our 3D model,
we need to put it into a slicer before we can print it,
so I'm going to export it from Tinkercad,
and I'm gonna export it as a .STL file,
and then I'm gonna open that up in my slicer.
Since I'll be printing this on my Prusa i3 MK2,
I'm using the Prusa edition of slicer,
but the settings would be the same,
no matter what slicer program you're using,
whether it's Cura or Simplify3D, or something else.
This is a simple model.
It doesn't need any kind of supports,
as long as it's printed vertically like this.
For print settings, I'm gonna keep layer height at .15,
because that works best on the Prusa.
I'm gonna keep first layer height at .2.
There's not gonna be a lot of infill,
but I'm gonna keep it at 20%, because I think
that will make it quite strong.
And we don't need any rafts, we don't need any skirts,
or anything like that.
For temperatures, we'll keep the main print at
205 degrees for the extruder and 55 degrees for the bed.
That should be good.
The first layers are a little bit warmer at 215 and 55,
and that's pretty much it.
So if I click on slice,
it will now take the 3D model and slice it.
So now if I preview it,
you'll be able to see how the printer's
actually going to print this.
So it starts with that bottom layer,
and just goes all the way up.
It shouldn't need any supports.
Everything should be fine, and I will export the Gcode.
I'll just save this as marker holder to the desktop.
I'll also put a link to this file in the description,
so that way you can download it and print it
or mess with it if you want.
I'll put the Gcode and the .STL file.
And that's it.
Now the next step is to put it on the printer's SD card,
and load it into the printer.
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So that's it.
That's pretty much the whole process
from coming up with the idea,
modeling it, slicing it, and printing it.
So I hope you found that helpful and interesting.
Be sure to check out some of the other videos
I posted about 3D printing.
I've also included the .STL and the Gcode files
for this 3D model in the description below.
And if you have any questions about 3D printing
or 3D printers, feel free to ask and I'll do my best
to help answer them, because even though
it can sometimes be complicated or confusing,
ultimately it should be fun,
and so my goal is to help you keep it fun.
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