- I needed something to
hold my dry erase markers, and I've been getting a
lot of questions lately about 3D printing, so
I thought this would be a good opportunity to walk
you through the entire process of modeling, slicing and printing in 3D. (upbeat digital music) Now, something like this is pretty easy to go buy at the store because it's really
just a piece of plastic. But, part of the fun of 3D printing is not buying cheap plastic at the store. You can design and model things
to suit your specific needs plus you get to go
through the actual process of making something. It would also be pretty easy
to find something like this on one of the sites like
Thingaverse or MyMiniFactory where you can download
3D models for printing. But, it's also really fun, when possible, to design your own prints,
especially if they're practical. (alarm sounds) (bell dings) And even though this
is a very simple shape, the reason that I waned
to design it myself, is because I wanted to make sure it held the exact number of markers that I needed, and that it would fit in the exact spot that I'm going to mount it. So where do you begin? How do you take an idea
like this from your head, and bring it into the physical world? To do the actual measuring, I just used some digital calipers
I got at Harbor Freight for pretty cheap. And basically these just
open up so you can measure different elements and see
exactly how big they are in millimeters. Once I measured the markers and the door, then it's time to
actually design the holder in a 3D modeling program. So if you don't know where to begin, I recommend tinkercad.com, which is an online-based CAD
program, 3D modeling program, which is great because
it's very easy to use if you're brand new, but if you have a little more experience, it does have some pretty
advanced features as well. Another benefit to Tinkercad
is that it's online-based, so you can log in from any computer and continue working on your designs. And it's really easy
to share them as well. Now, just some of the very basics. There's a work plane here you can rotate to see the different dimensions: top, front, right, and left sides. And pretty much any design
you make in Tinkercad is going to evolve from the use of some combination of shapes. Solid colored shapes are solid objects. These ones that have
lines in them are holes. They're essentially negative space. So for what we need to create today, I'm gonna start with just a box. The color of the box doesn't matter, because the color of the final object will be determined by whatever
filament we end up using. This just needs to be the size I measured based on the markers, so
this is the actual size of the marker holder. And that's pretty simple. I just need one side to be
20 mm, which it is already. I would like the other side to be 105 mm, and then for height, I would
like it to be 88 mm tall. It's a big rectangle. And this is the size of the space where the markers need to go. The problem is that
this is a solid object, so if I print this, it's just going to be a solid, rectangular object, and it's not going to do anything. So, what I'm going to do
is click on this object and then duplicate it. So now, I have two of them. The second one, I'm going
to make slightly larger. So, instead of 20 mm wide, I'm going to make it 25 mm wide. And instead of 105 mm long, I would like to make it 110 mm long. So now it's bigger in every
dimension, except height. Instead of 88, I'm
actually going to make it a little smaller, and I'm
going to make it 85 mm, and I will explain why in a second. So now I have these two
shapes, which are very similar, but ones a little bit
bigger than the other. I'm going to take the first
shape, the smaller one, and I'm going to change that
from a solid to a whole. So now that's negative
space, and if I move that over the second object, you can see it actually cuts
out space in that object. That's why the second object
was a little bit bigger, because it's essentially
creating the shell that's going to hold this negative space, 'cause this is the size of
what needs to hold the markers, but this is the size of the shell that actually needs to
be the physical object. The reason I didn't make
the second shape taller was because I wanted it to
actually be a little shorter than the negative space, so that way it will cut off the top and allows you a spot
to put in the markers. Now in Tinkercad when you're
moving objects around, you can just drag them with the mouse, you can move 'em with the arrows, you can change the way the grid works, you can snap to grid,
you can turn that off. If I were to try to line these up by hand, it would probably be kind
of a maddening experience, and I don't feel like
going totally insane today. So, I'm going to select both of these, and I'm going to click this align tool, and it's gonna give me the option to align via the center dimensions. And so now it doesn't matter
what angle I'm looking at, both of these shapes are aligned perfectly based on the center. So right now, since both of these are resting on the same plane, the negative space is interacting
with the solid object, and that means this is
just gonna be a tube. It's not going to have a bottom to actually hold the markers. So I'm gonna take the negative space and just drag it up a little bit. So I ended up raising
it just by about 3 mm, and now if you look, you can see inside there's going to be a
bottom to this container that kind of matches the side. It's not real scientific. I just want it to be
thick enough to be strong. And the way I got this
double transparent view, was just to turn the outer
later also into a hole. So I'm gonna switch that back to a solid. Now the solid is filled with a hole. If I select both of these, and click group, it will combine them into one object, and now this is what our print is pretty much gonna look like. It's a very simple shape, but it's pretty cool. Now that we have our 3D model, we need to put it into a
slicer before we can print it, so I'm going to export it from Tinkercad, and I'm gonna export it as a .STL file, and then I'm gonna open
that up in my slicer. Since I'll be printing
this on my Prusa i3 MK2, I'm using the Prusa edition of slicer, but the settings would be the same, no matter what slicer
program you're using, whether it's Cura or
Simplify3D, or something else. This is a simple model. It doesn't need any kind of supports, as long as it's printed
vertically like this. For print settings, I'm gonna
keep layer height at .15, because that works best on the Prusa. I'm gonna keep first layer height at .2. There's not gonna be a lot of infill, but I'm gonna keep it
at 20%, because I think that will make it quite strong. And we don't need any rafts,
we don't need any skirts, or anything like that. For temperatures, we'll
keep the main print at 205 degrees for the extruder
and 55 degrees for the bed. That should be good. The first layers are a little
bit warmer at 215 and 55, and that's pretty much it. So if I click on slice, it will now take the
3D model and slice it. So now if I preview it, you'll be able to see how the printer's actually going to print this. So it starts with that bottom layer, and just goes all the way up. It shouldn't need any supports. Everything should be fine,
and I will export the Gcode. I'll just save this as
marker holder to the desktop. I'll also put a link to this
file in the description, so that way you can
download it and print it or mess with it if you want. I'll put the Gcode and the .STL file. And that's it. Now the next step is to put
it on the printer's SD card, and load it into the printer. (upbeat digital music) So that's it. That's pretty much the whole process from coming up with the idea, modeling it, slicing it, and printing it. So I hope you found that
helpful and interesting. Be sure to check out
some of the other videos I posted about 3D printing. I've also included the
.STL and the Gcode files for this 3D model in
the description below. And if you have any
questions about 3D printing or 3D printers, feel free
to ask and I'll do my best to help answer them, because even though it can sometimes be
complicated or confusing, ultimately it should be fun, and so my goal is to help you keep it fun. (upbeat digital music)
