On today's episode I'm going to show you how to make a two color print that's
flush to the surface on any single nozzle 3d printer using Z hop in Cura
I'll show you all the steps on today's Filament Friday. Filament Friday is
brought to you by these patreon supporters. I'm working on an electronic
project. I wanted a nice case for it this was my first shot at it. I was just gonna
put a sticker over it, changed my mind. Tried to make it a little fancy with rounded
edges didn't like it. Then I made one with recessed letters and it was fine
but it's kind of plain. And then I decided I wanted to do two colors now I do
have a printer here that can do two colors it's a GEEETECH machine but I wanted
to try this method with the Z hop. So normally the nozzle would just come
across when it gets to a gap retracts filament goes across the gap pushes out
filament again and keeps printing. With Z hop it'll not only retract the filament
it'll lift the nozzle go across the gap and come back down and then start printing
material again. So that's how Z hop works. here's my design in Tinkercad that I
created. I've got this little push button lever it goes in a hole, push the button,
a back cover and then this is the case to hold the electronics.
I've got mounts designed in to hold the circuit board and a frame for going
around the display but now let me show you the top of this thing that's what
we're working on. So this design actually has some recessed areas or inlay areas
you can see this frame around the outside as a channel and then also the
dice and the words are the same way they're recessed just like an inlay. So
the way I did that is I have the design and made it into a hole and then when I
grouped it together it took away that material. So I ungrouped it here so I can
duplicate that and then I can slide this out and make it into a solid. So I
duplicated it, slid it out to the side and then I'm gonna change this from a
hole into a solid. So I'll just click on the red here and now it's a solid piece.
Now that that's a solid I can work with it. So I'm gonna flip it 180 degrees and
then I'll bring it down to the bed and I'm just gonna slide it down here
below the box. But let me show you how thick it is. I'm gonna bring the ruler
tool, I made this thing only zero point four millimeters tall so at a 0.2
layer height that's two layers. Which is perfect. So if I center these two to each
other you can see they line up so that's how I can line these up in Cura. I'll
show that in a minute. So now that I have these two, what I'm
gonna do is export them as separate STL files.
First the lettering and then the box itself. I'll export both of those as STL
and then we'll bring it into Cura. First I brought the lettering in to Cura and layed
it flat on the bed. And it's centered on the bed. Then I'm going to use my 0.2
profile so 0.2 layer height and I'm gonna shut off any skirt. I want no skirt.
Nothing around this. I just want the lettering. I'll slice it real quick. 4
minutes to print this and you can see it's only two layers so when I go to
preview mode two layers. Easy. So let's print this and then we'll move
on. So here it is printing on my Ender three and when it's done it looks pretty
good. I got all the letters to stick. My bed is leveled pretty well, and the dice came
out great. Now we're ready to do the box. So now
I'll bring the box in but I haven't removed the letters yet. So I'm gonna center
these two and then verify that they line up so when I flip it over you can see
they're lined up. So then I'll select the lettering and delete that and I'm back
to just my box with gaps. But the space is where it's going to Z hop over so
it's going to print the black and it's gonna Z hop over the red that's already
printed, and then it comes back down and prints more black. So it'll do that in between
the lettering and around it I'm gonna use the same settings except now I'm
going to use Z hop. I search on Z hop and you just check
this box and it's it talks about the bed moving because that's ultimaker, the nozzle will go up.
Then you need to set the height and remember I said it was a 0.4 millimeter
height on the red so I'm gonna make this hop to a 0.5 millimeters. So then I can
slice this and as you can see it takes 4 hours and 25 minutes so it's a longer
print. But here it is in preview and it really doesn't show the hop but you can
see it's, you know, guiding around the letters
and then eventually it's gonna fill in everything else and in the last
step it actually draws the inserts or in between the dice. So this is what it's
going to print in black so now let's see this actually in action. So here it is
printing the black inside the red and you can see this thing Z hop. It comes up
a little bit goes to the next spot and then it comes up here at the letters
goes in between the letter,s goes in between the dice and just prints the
black in between the red. Just hops all over the place. It's really cool how this
works. It was actually difficult to get this to film close enough with my camera
but it I think this captures it and you can see
here's some of it completed. There's still one dice not completed here's most
of it covered and then when it's done you know like the third layer it starts
covering everything with black until it finishes the print. And then here's the
finished print and it came out really nice. Came off the bed easy and
everything's flush I'm really happy with the results. There's the finished design
I'm pretty happy with it now you could print this on glass and
get a real smooth finish but I want a little bit of texture on this guy so I'm
happy with the results I'm getting. But you want to make sure your bed is clean
and you want to make sure it's leveled so those letters and stuff will stick
and not come off while it's printing the second print. So it's really not
difficult to do you can do this on any printer, just use the Z Hop in Cura and
you're ready to go. So let me know what you guys think of this in the comments
below. And that's it for this week. I hope you're doing well
staying safe during this turmoil we're going through right now. And I'm not even
worried about all the other stuff subscribe do whatever I don't care just
have fun, enjoy, stay safe, and I'll see you next time right at Filament
Friday