Hello and welcome to this Animation Master tutorial about how
to create something in Animation Master which should be printed
out later on on a 3D printer, in my case
a MakerBot Replicator 2.
And it’s a quite easy process, but I want to
show you what you have to have a look at
and what you have to care about to get everything
right and to print it out right away.
Okay, so the first thing I want to do is
I want to create a new object.
So I just double click on the object folder in
the pvs and now I’m just going to create some
sort of object.
I will lace, for example, a race or something like
that.
Something very simple.
Because it’s not about the object here, it’s about the
process to get to printing it.
Okay, and here’s the first thing.
I like to close my objects fully so that there
is no hole in it.
And for lacing an Animation Master, that is not possible
from the beginning on, or at least not in the
way that it’s looking good.
And because of that I will just leave this little
space here.
And after that I will, for example, lace it.
Now I will go to the Lace Options sections here
and I will increase that because the Makerbot will print
with quite high resolution and you will see the different
polygons.
Otherwise if I’m not going here, very high up.
And it’s very likely that you will see them anyway,
but it will just not be very noticeable for someone
who doesn’t know that they are here.
Okay, so we go to the 16 subdivision level there.
I will lay that.
And what you can see now is that I have
a some kind of object, quite dense object.
And let’s get rid of some normals.
And normals are very important.
So have a good look at the normals.
As you can see, they are pointing outwards here like
it should be.
If you are unsure in which direction your normals point,
you should go to the Tools or Options menu, go
to Rendering tab, go to Shaded and you should deactivate
the show back facing polys here.
So it normally is on.
And if you go to it and you set it
to off, you will see the following.
I will just flip one of the normals here and
as you can see it will be totally transparent and
we can see through it.
And like that I can see where something is not
closed.
And because of that I will have this option in.
Otherwise your Makerbot will, yeah, he will print something, but
he doesn’t necessarily print what you are looking for there.
Because of that.
Please Have a look at that.
I have been told that I don’t need to close
the holes in my object.
I have to admit that I never tried that, because
I just don’t know what the Makerbot should do in
this case, because how should we connect something now there
is an object that has to be printed.
The object has a volume, and because of that something
has to be done here.
And Makerbot can now assume that, for example, I want
to close the object in this way maybe, but maybe
I don’t want that.
And because of that I just have to define it
for him so that the state is clear.
And Makerbot, the replicator too has not to guess anything
because of that, I’m just closing everything down.
And I have made good experience with that.
So just go to the add mode.
I tend to use the stitch mode for that because
it’s just not deforming anything else here.
So just press shift while you are connecting something.
And like that I can quite fast close my object
and mean that this part here is very flat, but
that’s not a problem in general, because it’s a small
part for my object later.
And like that I just preserve the shape that I
have formed around that.
That is the more important shape for me.
Because of that, I’m just doing that.
And you just don’t have to worry much about how
it would look if you are rendering, because that’s not
very important for the printer.
Okay.
And as you can have a look at the normals
again.
I have to say it again, just have a look
at the normals and do it in the right way.
You will just get what you want and you won’t
get anything you can’t handle.
Okay? Another thing for printing objects in 3D is that
you have to be aware of your overhangs.
As you can see, we have now at this point,
an overhang that means that the printer, which is going
from the bottom up and printing one line after another.
I will, for example, show you that with just a
small object that I will create here.
This is just to show you how the printer will
work.
You don’t have to do that in any case.
And as you can see, this is my spline and
it’s more or less a straight line.
And now you can see the printer will go from
here.
Print this part.
Print this part with a specified layer height.
You are specifying in Make Aware.
Make Aware is a printing software and it will just
print, print, print, print, print.
And to print something at this point, Make Aware or
the MakerBot Replicator 2 in this case needs to have
something to print on, because you can’t print in thin
air at this point, for example.
And it will very likely work at this point and
in any case at this point.
But it can be depending on the size of your
object you are printing later on that you will get
into trouble with this part here.
Because at this point, if Makerbot starts printing this part
here, at this point there is nothing to print on.
And because of that, you would have to use support
materials in makerware later on.
The problem with support materials in the Megabot Replicator 2,
in comparison, the Megabot Replicator 2X can for example, print
with a different material, like for example, pva.
The good thing about that, plastics that is water, not
water resistant.
Because of that, you can just more or less dissolve
this PVA in water.
And like that you could very easily get rid of
support material.
But the Replicator 2 can’t print with two different colors
at this point.
And because of that, you will have to have a
look at the support material and you will have to
manually get rid of that.
And since the support material is the same material, like
the material you are printing with, this can get quite
hard.
It depends on your model and it depends on the
support material.
And sometimes I tend to do my own support material
and not my own support structure and not let Makerbot
do it automatically for me.
But in this case, I would say that you may
run into trouble.
You just have to try it out sometimes, because as
I said before, in some situations, if this, for example,
would be a very, very small object, like for example,
I don’t know, maybe just 1cm in size or something
like that, it will print nonetheless because the sticking to
the sides here would be enough to hold some material
at this point.
But you just have to have a look at that
and have to see if it’s working or if it’s
not working.
So try it out and don’t be, yeah, don’t be
too cheap about your plastic because it’s really, really, really,
really much.
I can print from, for example, spool of 1 kg.
The plastic is very, very light.
And yeah, you will just have to see what is
going on there.
But in the end it will just not cost you
a fortune.
Okay.
And that’s more or less it.
So just to make sure that we could print this,
I will just grab my outer parts here, the ones
that may have or may be of trouble, and I
just go and make them a little bit smaller like
that.
And in most cases this should print very well.
I tend to have my own rule here is that
I don’t go over 60 degrees of overhang.
That means that, for example, this part is okay.
If you are going to print with an overhang of
for example 90 degrees, which would be this one, that’s
just too much.
But as I said, it depends on the size of
your model and some other factors.
And because of that you just have to try it
out once in a while.
Okay.
And as you can see, we have an object here
now.
And all I have to do now is I just
right click in my modeling window, go to Plugins Wizards
and export.
You can’t see it, but there’s a sterilithography model in
brackets STL file that I can export from Animation Master.
I think it started with 17 if I’m not wrong.
And here is my export dialog.
You can choose how often the polygons which are created
or how often the patches will be will be parted
or split into polygons here.
And because of that you can just use for example
one of these settings.
And we are printing with a 3D printer.
So you should go in a very high value here.
I tend to go to 64 because it just doesn’t
matter much.
And there is nothing that, for example, on the rendering
time or something like that.
It’s just not concerning you here.
Because of that, go to one of the higher values
here, 32 or 64 and don’t bother with one, for
example, okay? Just tell him where to go to.
For example, I will go to this little part of
my hard drive here.
I will give it a name that I can reconnect
or recognize later on, for example Tutorial part STL and
just hit ok.
At this point binary format is ok.
And what I want to show you here is that
Animation Master has a different sizing than MakeAware has.
And the sizing factor you have to consider is 10.
So if I import this to make aware this is
MakeAware.
So the current interface of the newest MakeAware edition.
You go to file add, you get your mount and
your part you want to print, you go to this,
you just say that the object is of the platform
and I just click here.
Yes, it doesn’t matter because you have to go to
the platform, but I will, for example, as you can
see, have to rotate my object.
Animation Master has a different coordinate system, but it’s really
just a matter of selecting the object, going to the
tool, going to this, and now just getting the right
axis to set it in the right space.
And now I just go to on platform, move on
platform and I tend to print in the middle.
But you can for example print several objects at once
if you want to.
So it really doesn’t matter.
And as you can see, we have a quite high
density here because we used the 64 subdivision level, which
means that every patch in Animation Master is parted four
times or eight times on each axis.
And like that you have a quite nice model here
it is on the build platform and as I said
before, this has a different scale than in Animation Master.
This scale is 20 millimeters, 22 millimeters on the x
axis.
If you go back here you will see that we
have 22 cm on the x axis.
So if you just use centimeters in Animation Master and
you just use centimeters as if they would be millimeters,
you are good to go.
That’s the easiest way to go.
Another way would be for example to just increase the
scale here.
That’s fine too.
For example, with 1000 to get this to be in
the right dimensions of 22 cm on this axis.
But as you can see, it’s just a little bit
too large for my Makerbot here to print because here
is some overlapping over my box I can print in.
The object is not suitable to be printed like this.
You may have to part it for example, if you
need to print something in that dimensions.
But that doesn’t matter very much.
Okay, so let’s go back to the original scale I
have imported here.
And again use centimeters in Animation Master as if they
would be millimeters in real world.
And like that you can create the right sized images
or objects that you want to create.
Okay, so.
And yeah, we are ready to print now.
You can see my makerbot is currently idle and can
print with my USB connection here.
And you just go to make it.
Now you would use your or choose your settings, the
quality settings for example.
And you can use the pre built ones which is
low, medium and high with different settings.
You can see at this point or you can this
indicates a little star I’m I have here.
You can use a different setting.
For example, in this case the medium for me is
layer height of null point 22 or 22 and the
original one would be this.
It just depends on how high the resolution should be.
Take in mind or have in mind that printing with
a smaller layer height will take longer, but it will
create the smoother surfaces.
So it depends on what you want to achieve here.
Here are the temperature settings and the speed settings.
In general I tend to leave them as they are.
With this, for example, if a print is not coming
along well and for example it’s just too fast and
something is going wrong with your print, you can for
example go here and I don’t know, do it for
example with 70 millimeters per second.
But in general I just don’t use that and I
keep it as it is.
What I do sometimes is the temperature.
For example, I sometimes get the temperature a little bit
lower, for example to 28, 228 Celsius, because the degree
level here will make it more likely to print very
well, but do it really very, very slightly.
So for example, if you go to 22,5 degree Celsius,
you will have a problem because it may be that
your PLA will no longer melt very well.
So going to high is not good, going to low
is not good.
So in general keep it at 230 degrees.
Maybe go to 228 degrees or something like that, but
don’t play too much with that.
It’s just not worth it in general.
And the quality setting is something I often have a
look at.
For example, the infill level will, will determine how much
material you will be printing with.
This means that there will be a structure inside of
the object you are printing and the structure will fill
10% of your object.
So if you need for example a very steady object,
you would increase this.
And if you for example, just want an object which
looks good and which has no purpose to, or to
be very steady as purpose to be very steady, you
just don’t have to have a look at that and
you just can leave it for example at 10% or
something like that.
So I did never print over 50% until now, 15%
until now.
And it is really, really hard to break anything here.
That is the case because for example, Makerbot has a
very nice structure in the object which will take much
of the plastic away, but it will really just leave
the steadiness at approximately the same level.
Because the infills are not giving you any more stable
object, but they are just increasing the height, the weight
of it.
Yeah, numbers of shells is something you don’t have to
bow so much with.
Again, if you increase this, the object will be more
steady and more stable and the layer height is more
or less the most important part here.
Because I am often, for example printing at a layer
height of 0 dot, for example.
This is half the resolution the MakerBot Replicator 2 can
do.
Actually.
You can even go with a much, much better resolution.
Than for example 0.1, so 100 micrometers.
There are people which have used MakerBot with your.
With for example, a setting of 0.0.5, so they doubled
the resolution again.
But that’s just a little bit harder to print with
and you will have more trouble to do that.
And because of that, just go with a setting like
for example, this one, because this is really a good
setting.
It will produce very nice objects and it’s twice as
fast as the one that would be if you are
going to print with layer height of 100 micrometers.
Okay.
And if you are ready, press on make it.
And if you press on, make it, he will slice
it at this point, verify it and start printing.
I will stop it before it’s printing at my point,
because I just don’t want to print that now.
But in general it’s a fast process and you may
have to wait, for example, I don’t know, maybe 10
minutes if it’s a more complex object, but that’s the
most time I had to wait for that.
And that’s more or less that.
So hope you have Fun with your MakerBot and with
animation Master, of course.
And if you have any questions, please feel free to
ask me, for example, in my blog or do a
comment below, or for example, if you want to use
a contact form on my website.
And let’s see what you can create with it.
Have a nice day.