Hey guys!
I thought it was about time that I wrote a little post on Talk of a project that I recently printed. While working at 3D Hubs I see all kinds of cool prints come by every day and some Hub profiles have some really impressive stuff! A couple of weeks ago I came across a Hub profile (unfortunately I can’t remember whose it was right now) but they had a T-Rex in their gallery which looked absolutely amazing to me and I actually had to give it a second look to spot that it was printed on an FDM machine.
I did a bit of searching on Thingiverse and I actually came across the same model, which was to my surprise, a model actually uploaded by Makerbot themselves. Feel free to check it out right here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:275091
Looking the page, I saw there were already 93 mades of this model and the model had already been on the front page of Thingiverse as well so I’m sure a number of you are actually going like this right now:
That said, I did feel like it would a nice challenge to print the pieces seeing as it looked like quite a tricky print. I downloaded the files and opened them up in Craftware (because I used a Craftbot) and to my pleasant surprise, the parts were already perfectly oriented and I only had to set the right settings and slice the model.
I printed most of the parts at 150 micron in white colorfabb PLA at 20-30 mm/s at 190 degrees (thanks for the temperature advice Ken). The models themselves were modelled and positioned in such a way that I didn’t require any supports which I thought was really nifty and quite impressive! I did print a raft underneath the prints to make sure that they would actually stick to the bed but I’m sure a lot of printers wouldn’t even need this either.
One tip I can give you, make sure that you have something fun to do while you’re waiting for a print to finish, because it does take a while… especially when you’re printing it as nice and slow as I was. I can highly recommend The Witcher 3 
Nothing as relaxing as sailing into the sunset on the weekend.
Anyway, here are a couple of progress shots.
One more thing I’d like to mention is that the files come with a really clear instruction manual and you don’t need any other material to put the print together but the models included in the .zip file. In the end it’s like you’re putting together a lego project, and who doesn’t like that right?
Here’s the final version of the print with full-color printed me standing in front of it. I do realize that some parts could be a bit cleaned up and the teeth are a bit messy but I am happy with the project for now. Does anyone have a suggestion on what to print next? I’m all ears!
Happy printing guys!
