Disaster in 3D land

I know I tend to stick to a one post a week system on this blog but I got some results yesterday that I felt I needed to share.

So as I’m sure you’ve read, I am making a BAM using 3D printing. So far the process has been one big learning exercise and every iteration teaches me a whole host of new things about 3D printing and plastics.

So angular, this model needs some smoothing

Yesterday I wanted to try out a trick I’d read about online where you use acetone to smooth the rough lines on a 3D printed model. Nicely demonstrated in this article in Wired.

Slick Trick Adds Much-Needed Shine to 3-D Printed Parts

Now I didn’t have some of the equipment to do this exactly the same as them but I thought I could have a go at cobbling something together. For example I didn’t have a heater suitable for vaporizing acetone so I reasoned that instead I would simply let it evaporate and incubate my model for longer. Below is the resulting outcome of that ‘clever’ reasoning.

Yeah pretty sure that’s not better

I’m thinking I may have left it in too long 😀