Hello guys, I have a model of a ballista toy, and I haven’t really considered about its printability before loading it into the slicer. Now it takes a huge lot of support, plus there are a bunch of areas I’m not exactly sure if I can print.
First of all, here is my model(I know it looks bad): BallistaNEW.3mf (73.0 KB)
I ran into problems like…
I would want to know if this would work(Personally I think it will crash), and if there were any ways to optimize this model. I also tried to cut it into multiple parts and making dovetails for every one of them, but found that way too complicated and impractical.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Optimization for printability starts at the design stage in your 3D program of choice. Check out Slant3D on youtube for tips and tricks regarding designing for 3D printing.
Make it more parts, too much going on with the main ballista part imo.
I would make it so the bow part is separate and will be the only part that needs support. And the bow part is going to need considerable testing most likely, how thick / long should it be + what type and percent of infill to get the proper action (and PETG for flexibility of course).
It is just plastic after all so perhaps you don’t need the full dovetail treatment and can just use some ~10mm screws which are easy-ish to print but like everything it’s somewhat complicated to get this just right, for instance I had to watch a few videos of pro’s doing screws and taps in fusion to find a proper tolerance process (hint: offset the faces of the threads on the screw).
The bottom line is that for me it is all about designing for printability and avoiding support (extra filament and extra time = extra cost).
