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3D Printing Using Anim8or

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2020 Hindsight:
Thanks Old Coger.
I've just had a try on build 1.01.1402 and got the same result.

Is there a reason for limiting lathe to 32 segments? I suppose it makes rendering faster, but isn't so useful for 3D printing.

Anyway I feel we are digressing from the point I was trying to make about using the boolean operations scripts:

You wanted to break down a large print in to smaller prints to fit on your printer's build plate. The boolean operations seem like they should be usable for that purpose. But davdud101 seemed to be indicating that boolean operations introduce inaccuracies. I wondered if he was talking about where a plane on both shapes the boolean operation take are coincident (I mean same position in space and parallel - like the opening to the hole through the roller when both cylinders were the same length)? Or is there another problem?

How are you intending to assemble the parts? Glue? Or nut and bolt? Or some other way?

Old Codger:
2020 Hindsight asked, "How are you intending to assemble the parts? Glue? Or nut and bolt? Or some other way?"

If I had my "druthers" I druther engineer the pieces to snap together but I can see using glue. I'm thinking about making my granddaughter a Minnie Mouse toy or something like that. I was also thinking about taking some of the things I've made in Anim8or and turning them into real objects. If I used different color material for the different parts I can see how I could make the detail using paint or even printed custom decal material. I really don't know what I'm going to do considering I have never done 3D printing and that is a whole other ball of wax from crafting machines in Anim8or. I am anticipating a good bit of teething problems. I know just setting up my regular dot matrix printer/scanner took a while when I had to replace the older one. I have spent too much time with microcomputers since 1983 to expect the setup on the 3D printer to go smoothly. But I'm old and retired and what else do I have to do?

Oh and if you look at Steven's answer to my question about lathing you'll see that 32 segments is a limitation built into the software itself. I accept his answer that it had to do with computing resources. I'm just going to be interested to see how my normally fairly simple shapes come out as physical objects. 

2020 Hindsight:
It is satisfying watching your objects being printed. I'm sure you will have fun!

Tweaking is required to get good prints. A lot of people try to print objects using the fastest settings, but the best way to get a good looking print is to print slowly (or at least not too quickly). You often see echos of corners in printed objects because they have been flinging the print head around too fast.

The biggest problem I have with printing, is printing large objects. The wider an object is, the more it contracts as it cools, and tries to peel itself off the build plate. But I tend to keep to small components anyway. The printers at the FabLab have transparent enclosures to keep the ambient temperature up. They seem to have success printing large objects.

One guy at the FabLab printed a violin he downloaded from ThingiVerse for his daughter. So it is possible to print large objects

It might have been this one:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1533229
or possibly this one:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2752036

I've seen youtubers get good finishes on prints by painting them with primer, and then sanding with wet and dry to get rid of print layer ridges.

ENSONIQ5:
Smoothing with a tension of 1 just places edges and points between existing edges and points without actually smoothing anything, whereas a tension of 0 would give 64 smooth facets.  Your point about the end caps is valid but this can be addressed with 'edge reinforcing' prior to smoothing.  There are a few ways to do this but the goal is to double- or triple-up any edges you want to keep sharp before smoothing.  The roller below was lathed from a rectangle with 32 facets (first image - note the tripled edges around the inner and outer rim) before being subdivided (second image).

ENSONIQ5:
There is also another way to create a 'roller' object with 100 facets by creating 2 concentric 100-sided N-gons (or create one and duplicate/resize it), selecting them both and selecting Build > Join splines, then extrude with start and end caps both ticked in the extrude dialog.  100 sides is the max for the N-gon and the end cap triangulation means smoothing probably isn't an option, but it's something to consider.

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