How to create a rectangular pattern with over 1700 quantity?

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I know I have gain a lot of help for my project on here, but I am relatively new to Fusion360 and 3D modeling and I am learning all of this by the online tutoring. So, if anyone could give me any hints, that would be great!

I am trying to create a rectangular slab consisting of a hexagonal closed packed spheres. The rectangular slab should be 70mm * 20mm * 1mm and the diameter of each sphere should be 40 microns. Therefore, by division, I would need 1750 spheres in length, 500 in width and 25 in height.

Of course, when I type in 1750 into the quantity of the R-pattern dialog box, the software stop responding because it is eating up too much resourses. I tried breaking it up to 100, 200, 300 ... (add 100 at a time) and create a new component to store the R-pattern, but it still eats up too much resources. 

This is a video of my approach: https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/fca75f4b-8db0-411f-afe2-dbd838e5c409

I wonder if there is any way to approach this problem?

I truly appreciate any of your help!!!

Jason

[Anonymous]

And I would add, to try to choose good settings in Slicer if you end up using that, such as the correct filament diameter, nozzle size, speed, etc., hopefully you can get that information readily. 

Jesse

[Anonymous]

oh I didn't know I could choose makerbot there!!! I will try that and see if it works!!

YOU ARE GOD JESSE

[Anonymous]

Just a small worker for God 😉

[Anonymous]

Hey Jesse, do you think this for loop would work? (I think it should work!!!!)

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
     int xOffset = x * i;
     for (int j = 1; j < 10; j++) {        //I think this works!!!
          int yOffset = y * j;
          singleFile(input, output, xOffset, yOffset);
      }
}

the static method singleFile(input, output, xOffset, yOffset) simply reads the file and modify it.

I think this should work, just want to make sure!!

THANKS GOD'S WORKER JESSE

Jason

[Anonymous]

Hmm, I'm guessing your singleFile function does all the magic of extracting current x and y values, and add their xOffset/yOffset, and write back to the text file (and awesomely it looks like you already got all that working).  So yeah the loops look good and I have full confidence you're going to get it to work!

Jesse 

[Anonymous]

I'm gonna bring it to the printer next Monday or maybe tomorrow! I'll let you know how it goes 😄

[Anonymous]

Hi Jesse,

The result was kind of frustrating - the extruder and platform didn't move at all .. what's wrong with my code? 😞

Jason

[Anonymous]

Hey Jason, sorry to hear that, although I was expecting as much...typically for anything like this (not just with writing code, but even more with physical stuff) it takes a lot of trial and error, tinkering, and eventually getting something to start working (and learning a lot from the process).  In order to be able to manipulate gcode for your specialized application, you really need to have easy access to a 3d printer, even if it's just a dirt cheap one for a few hundred bucks (which is still not that cheap unfortunately).  So first you need to get a simple part to print without trouble, then go from there.  It's all about building upward, one small step at a time (didn't some astronaut say something similar??).  I don't really know your situation what what you're trying to do, but you seem quite smart and persistent, and it sounds interesting, so I hope to hear more from you!

Good luck man.

Jesse 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jesse,

Unfortunately I really do not have easy access to 3D printer. This is a project I'm doing for my lab (unpaid), so I do not expect spending any money on it (although time is money!)

HOWEVER, what you said inspired me - maybe I should generate 6 spheres lining up together and see what the gcode looks like compared to the 3 spheres in a line? Since we already know from the previous file, it takes 985 line to print a single sphere. I'm gonna try that and see if that works ..

THANKS AGIAN!

Jason