Thursday, 9 September 2021

I created a monster...

I have an allotment. Now it's not often that Allotment and 3D printing overlap, but in this case I grow a lot of courgettes. So following on from the idea of square watermelons, I decided to see if I could grow the courgettes into something monstrous.

First find your model. I turned to Thingiverse to find a bust of Frankenstein's Monster. Once chosen now I need to apply it. This was done before the latest Alpha release of PrusaSlicer which seems to have a lot more options for creating negatives.

I started with a simple cylinder on the build plate. Then applied the model as a modifier. I set the infill to 0%, all layers and perimeters to 0.

After that it involved rotating the model by 90° and performing a cut.

Once I had the two halves, I could then rotate them back and re-arrange the pieces on the build plate.

Now it's time to actually print the mould. Once done I placed it around a growing courgette and waited. The end result didn't turn out too badly.

There was a slight issue in the way the mould was held together. I made the cut from nose to back of the head. The tape I used to secure it stretched under the pressure applied. I should have made the cut ear-to-ear which would have kept the face intact. And of course there was a discolouration because the mould was printed in grey PLA and no sunlight could get to the skin to make it dark green. But anyway, overall I was happy with the result.

After all, it's not often you get to 3D print a courgette.







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