A cool accident

Turning one of those crap moments into a, hey wait, this is pretty cool moment.

Dealing with a print cooling, curling and lifting from the bed is never a good thing. unless minor it is generally enough to ruin a print.

Not the case this time, it actually made the print much better.

I don't have a heated bed so curling is always possible, especially with larger prints.

I have a friend bugging me about printing him a frisbee golf disc. The only files on thingiverse are with flat tops, kind of an unusual shape as they are rounded in real life but I figured I would try it out anyway.


A quarter through the print I notice lifting and was about to abort until I realized it was doing it all the way around, I let it finish. You can see in the middle of the first picture the darker area where it is still stuck to the bed.

This did affect the finish as it was lifting into the nozzle but man if there is a way to have the nozzle adjust up and in very slightly every layer this could be a cool way to force convex parts. Maybe have a small circular heated area in the middle and fans cooling the outer ring. If there was a way to have the printer compensate for lift it would be interesting to see how far it could curl.

 

That's awesome. How's it fly?

 

Like flinging a Tupperware lid HAHA!
I told my bud it wouldn't be practical but he kept asking. Some people just need to see it first hand.
It looks cool though as a concept.

 

Plastics probably not dense enough. Might work for a putter lol

 

Bunch of other materials that I think would work better than PLA. Way too stiff.

I told him if he is dead set on a custom made disc the idea would be to use a printed part to make a nice mold and play with some denser materials. Then you could make all you want. so what if you loose it in the woods, just make 5 more.

Oh but man, wouldn't it be sweet to be able to print some carbon fiber discs? If that worked people would eat that up. That's even stiffer yet, but people hear carbon fiber and reach for their wallets lol.

 

I'd prefer HDPE or something with some rubber in it.

 

The price or carbon fiber is completely dependent on the grade, weave and thread size. The studd ranges anywhere from $25-30/yd up to $300+ per yard.

For a small 5" disc i could make composite carbon fiber sandwhich discs for around $30-40 a piece. The problem is they wont handle impacts very well or for long. Kevlar is much better for impact forces.

 

You could always make it into a model of that spaceship on Lost in Space.

 

Sooo.. I was way wrong... Previously I had only slow tossed it in my small yard, when tossed light it wobbles and drops. I took this disc to a large park, Holy crap this thing throws insanely well at high speeds!
My buddy brought some real discs and we put it against his "Extra Long Range Driver".. Smoked it! Threw straighter and farther every single throw.

I'm getting a video together showing the tests but even cooler is another one I just printed that I hope works even better. (Hint: Yup, I did it in Carbon Fiber)