I am preparing a special gift for my friend, scanning her and 3D printing her to make a life-like figure. After a lot of hard work, I have completed the 3D scanning with Range2 and transferred the data to Revo Scan 5 for processing. I am both excited and a little nervous to see my ideas gradually take shape.
Now it is the critical 3D printing stage, and I would like to ask for some advice. Regarding materials, I am considering using PLA because I heard that it is easy to print and environmentally friendly, but I am not sure if this is the best choice. Would ABS or other materials be better? I hope the figure can show details and be durable.
In addition, I have some doubts about the printing parameter settings. In order to ensure the fineness and quality of the print, such as layer height, filling density, printing speed, how should I adjust these parameters to achieve the best effect?
I hope to get some experience sharing to make this gift more perfect. Thank you very much!
I did this with a cell phone scanning app in like 10 min. I couldn’t properly convert it to stl from the app and had to export as something else then convert to STL and that killed the quality.
If you have a better scanner or app, I’m sure details will be better then mine!
I printed with normal PLA. 0.2 with 20% infill and tree supports, You wanna use tree supports for something like this and lower the density of them. Also depending on your printer, you wanna slow it down a bit to get better details and less ringing! Material doesn’t really matter, PLA is normally used for model, I wouldn’t use ABS for this unless it will be in the sun and if so then you should use ASA.
If you want detail, then the best is resin (but if you want life size, then that’s not an option). If using FDM, you’ll get the same results with any type of filament.
For fine detail, I would use PLA; then sand, prime and paint. PLA works well with acrylic paint and a clear coat finish will seal your work.
Choose design software that suits your skill level and needs, such as Tinkercad, Fusion 360, SketchUp, SolidWorks, etc., to create 3D models of your products.
Start designing your product with the design software of your choice. Consider the structure, details, functionality and printability of the product to ensure that the design is suitable for 3D printing. For materials, you can use petg 3d printer filament to develop.
I print small Venus of Willindorf statues often. It’s my go to print test. I got tired of benchys and torture toaster and castle are slow. It is a figure.
It really depends on the printer and the tuning you have.
I usually print with lightning infill at 10% and 2 perimeters.
Super light very little material and super quick.
You might wish to consider variable infill and have a lot on the lower end for stability. You could also pause the print to add weight. I tend to like bbs or pellets.
On a different note any material with S in its name ABS ASA releases quite toxic gases. They are best printed in an enclosure.
PLA is a debatable environmental less toxic material. The recycling difficulties make it a question. No environmental issue is simple or clear cut. If it looks that way then ask if you are missing something.
