Collaborate Disseminate
Layer lines are a dead giveaway to non-normies that a thing was 3D printed. There are things you can do to smooth them — sanding, chemical smoothing, and fillers come …read more Continue reading Powder Your Prints For Baby-Smoothness
3D printing’s real value is that you can whip up objects in all kinds of whacky geometries with a minimum of fuss. However, there’s almost always some post-processing to do. …read more Continue reading Cheap Deburring Tool Is Game Changer For 3D Printing
Some careful measuring and a little extra effort can be all that separates what looks like a hack job from a slick end product, and that is apparent in [Eric …read more Continue reading Original Controller Ports in Custom Case Means Retro Gaming In Style
We don’t have to tell the average Hackaday reader that desktop 3D printing has been transformative for our community, but what might not be as obvious is the impact the …read more Continue reading With a Little Heat, Printed Parts Handle Vacuum Duty
Affordable 3D printers let us turn ideas into physical reality without a big expensive workshop, but with their power came some disadvantages. The nature of FDM printers impart layer lines …read more Continue reading Give 3D Printed Plastic a Well-Worn Metal Look
There’s a lot of folklore around post-processing of prints from FDM printers. Proponents swear by their methods, which are generally intended to either strengthen the part or to improve its appearance, or both. But do they actually work?
Knowing that a collection of anecdotes is no substitute for actual data, …read more
Continue reading Take This 3D-Print Post-Processing Method with a Grain of Salt
An ultrasonic knife is a blade that vibrates a tiny amount at a high frequency, giving the knife edge minor superpowers. It gets used much like any other blade, but it becomes far easier to cut through troublesome materials like rubber or hard plastics. I was always curious about them, and recently made my own by modifying another tool. It turns out that an ultrasonic scaling tool intended for dental use can fairly easily be turned into a nimble little ultrasonic cutter for fine detail work.
I originally started thinking about an ultrasonic knife to make removing supports from SLA …read more
Continue reading Making an Ultrasonic Cutter for Post-processing Tiny 3D Prints
An ultrasonic knife is a blade that vibrates a tiny amount at a high frequency, giving the knife edge minor superpowers. It gets used much like any other blade, but it becomes far easier to cut through troublesome materials like rubber or hard plastics. I was always curious about them, and recently made my own by modifying another tool. It turns out that an ultrasonic scaling tool intended for dental use can fairly easily be turned into a nimble little ultrasonic cutter for fine detail work.
I originally started thinking about an ultrasonic knife to make removing supports from SLA …read more
Continue reading Making an Ultrasonic Cutter for Post-processing Tiny 3D Prints