as with every large agglomeration of peoplethat are enthusiastic about a topic, there are always trends coming and going. right now for 3d printing, it’s the hairyor furry lion, and the cool thing about this one is that it’s not just a 3d printed blockof plastic, it’s actually using the properties of the plastic in quite a unique way. let’s check it out! so the lion design is actually loosely basedon a few earlier concepts, the drooloop flowers by mark peeters, and the furry vase by danielnoree. both of these work on the same concept: they’vegot a regular, solid 3d printed part in the
center, and at certain spots pull the moltenfilament string out and loop it back in. this works because the molten plastic doesn’tjust run out like water, it’s actually still fairly tough and chewy. in fact, if you’ve ever tried pulling abit of plastic from a printer’s nozzle, you’ll have seen just how much the materialcan stretch before it snaps. it’s the same effect that allows “3d printingâ€pens to work and real 3d printers to print bridges, that is when they have only two pointsof a print at the same height and need to connect them with just a string of materialin thin air. if that’s tuned in well, it’s going tobe a perfect span between those two points,
but if you take away the second pillar ofthat bridge, the plastic is simply going to curl down, and that’s the effect the flowersand furry vase use. for the lion, it’s actual, real bridges,and those do come out perfectly straight, but of course, that means it needs that secondbridge pillar, in this case the model has an extra shell around the print that givesthe plastic strands something to grab onto and then gets removed after the print. so how do you print one? well, if it was just “download the modeland print itâ€, i wouldn’t be making a video about it.
if you have a close look at the 3d model,you’ll see that each hair is its own rectangular element, just large enough to fit two filamentlines, one from the model to the outside shell, and another on the way back. the dimensions here are fairly important:each element is 0.2mm tall and 0.8mm wide. if that sounds familiar, well, it is. this design is optimized to be printed witha 0.2mm layer height and a 0.4mm nozzle. if that mismatches what you’re actuallyprinting with, the hair just isn’t going to come out nicely. some models are available for example fortaller layers, and the flower designs can
be customized to fit your exact setup, butthat 0.4mm nozzle and 0.2mm layer height should be ok for most users. that also means you shouldn’t scale downthe part before printing, because if you do, your lion is going to come out pretty bald,whether you like it or not, and in that case, you could have just printed the regular hairlesslion. now, all these individual hairs should comeout a straight and clean as possible, unless you want your lion to curly hair, of course. so make sure your bridges print settings aretuned in the filament you want to use, and maybe print one of these make magazine testparts beforehand.
i wanted to tune in bridges for the 3dprimawoodfilled filament, and by just trying out a few different settings, i settled on a fasterprint speed and a lower extrusion multiplier, meaning that the plastic in the bridges willget stretched tighter and not droop as much. if you’re having trouble with bridges notcoming out cleanly, just play around with these two settings until you find a combinationthat work. what also helps is printing at a lower temperature,and for pla and copolyester filaments, setting the part cooling fan to 100% for bridges. and now you should ready to print it! it’s going to be around a 9 hour print,ideal for leaving it overnight.
since you can go relatively light on infill,it’s only going to use 80 to 90g of filament. so once the print is done, do not remove itfrom the build plate, you have to separate the hairs from the supporting tower first. for that, a box cutter knife works perfectly,and since you probably won’t be able to reach all the way down in a single pass, justgo as deep as you can and then take a second pass, the hairs aren’t going to break off. you might be happy with how the lion looksat this point, i don’t know, but here’s how to get the mane looking like a mane andnot just like science experiment: hot air. don’t make the same mistake i made and tryto get the hair to flow on its own, because
once you get it hot enough for that, the hairsare just going to stick to each other like crazy. instead, try to use as little heat as possibleand form the mane with your hands. you can either get it all emo like this oneor keep it super fluffy, that’s up to you! go crazy and make it unique - no other lionis going to look exactly like yours! so i printed this one using a woodfill filament,and the texture and feel it gives the lion are really cool. this other one was printed with rainbow filament,which i think turned out even better since you have that layered style of the differentcolors interacting with each other.
if you want to print one, too, you can usepretty much any material you want - i think a crystal clear one would look pretty sweetas well! the download links are the video descriptionbelow! so if you learned something, give the videoa thumbs up, if not, let me know how i can improve them. also consider subscribing to the channel,and do click that bell or youtube might not show you updates as new videos come out. check out the affiliate links from the videodescription to shop for anything on amazon,
how much does it cost to get something 3d printed,ebay, matterhackers and aliexpress, usingthose doesn’t cost you a single penny extra,
or if you want to support this channel witha spare dollar or two, head over to patreon and get access to monthly q&a hangouts andmore. and that’s it for today, thanks for watching,and i’ll see you in the next one.
