3D Printing Scaled Down Assemblies

[MichaelbCKTJQ]

I'm trying to 3d print some some 1/64 scale assemblies for creating samples. The problem I'm running into is that these structures are made of sheet metal and when scaled down, CURA doesn't want to print any of the sheetmetal since at that scale the sheetmetal has almost 0 thickness. I've tried to use shrinkwrap to simplify the model but that doesn't help with the thin sections.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to thicken the faces without thickening 1000+ parts individually? We have access to Fusion 360 and 3DS Max if those programs could help.

I've included a full shrinkwrap so you can gat an idea of what I'm looking at.

[swalton]

I design large equipment for the rail industry.

I gave up on trying to use 3d printing for making scale models of my projects, using the actual design files. 

The only solution that I have seen is to remodel the object at the new scale and remove details, hollow sections and other features that are smaller than the process resolution.

I don't make many prints.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Michael,

The scaling isn't an issue. The problem here is that you need to thicken individual faces. I guess maybe you could find the source sheet metal parts and set very big thickness value. This is probably quicker than thickening individual faces.

Another workflow to consider is to bring the part or the mesh to Fusion 360. It has a dedicated Mesh modeling environment. You may want to try and see if some of the tools there can help create a 3D Printing friendly mesh model.

Many thanks!

[MichaelbCKTJQ]

That's what we've been doing with our base model booths, but we're trying to see if it's feasible to do this with every booth we make. Adding extra 2-4 hours to model a simplified version would add up quickly.

[swalton]

2-4 hours is trivial. I'm worried about projects that take 10-100s of hours to remodel...

[Garrett.Brothers]

This is something I'd love to be able to do as well.  At a very high level, however, I can only see three ways a software would be able to do this:

First, the modeling program is able to detect thin features and thicken them.  If all you need is thicker walls, then maybe you could write something that checks each solid for distances between parallel faces and thickens whatever it finds below the minimum.  I don't think there's an automatic tool for this.

Second, cheat around with some parametric element to the files, like @johnsonshiue 's idea to use sheet metal thickness.

Third -- and I think this is where your best bet would be -- find a way to make the slicer program analyze force minimum thickness on all geometry.  This might be built into CURA already, but I'm not certain.  (I 3D print as a hobby.  I have Cura installed on my home computer and not my work one, so I can't check now.)  I imagine it's a common thing people would want to do.  Honestly, though, I would check on a Cura-focused forums or 3D printing forums.  Even the 3D printing subreddit might be able to help with this.  It feels like this is more of a slicer/3D printing issue than an Inventor/modeling issue.

[MichaelbCKTJQ · Accepted solution]

I think I found a pretty good solution.

Step 1: Create a Shrinkwrap removing any parts smaller than 250mm and filling all holes smaller than 300mm.

Step 2: Copy Save As to create the STL

Step 3: Import the Shrinkwrap STL into Blender.

Step 4: Select all faces and use "Extrude faces along normals" tool.

Step 5: Adjust the offset value (I used 75 for 1/64 scale)

Step 6: Export as STL and scale in CURA.

Before:                                                     After:

[hn9579465]

I've the same problem when I want to 3D print a model of a yacht/ship/boat. The 3D printer (or the slicing software) doesn print the thin wall from the scaling-down process. I solved this by creating a first 2D-sketch where I define a simple line with a spefic line which reprents the hull thickness of the yacht. For example: The length of the line in this sketch is "sx=6" (6mm for the metal plate).

Then, whenever I define a wall of the hull I used this "sx" instead of a conrete value.

Before I scale the model down I chenge the value of "sx" so that it is thick enough for 3D-printing.

That works in most cases and can (may)be applied to other scaling down problems too.

[Frederick_Law]

ModelState.

One for actual part, one for scaled.

The scale one will increase thickness, remove small feature etc.