Is there some reason the model couldn't be rotated 90 degrees such that it was laying on its side vs standing up? That would seem to require a lot less support filament, no?Originally Posted by CleverNickname
Is there some reason the model couldn't be rotated 90 degrees such that it was laying on its side vs standing up? That would seem to require a lot less support filament, no?
Everything that could go wrong is contained in the slide. I suppose a rail failure might be a problem, but considering you can actually stop a 9mm slide from coming back on firing with just your thumb, that force isn't really that much.
The FMDA DD19.2 instructions say to print it in that orientation, so that's what I did. I'm assuming they did it that way for a good reason.
Fair enough. It was just what immediately occurred to me in terms of wasting less material. I have zero experience with 3D printing. Maybe there's something about the orientation of the layers being laid down that impacts the strength of the final product?
Yeah that seems like a good assumption. "Taking less time to print" would be more of a plus for me than "wasting less material", though.
Those are sort of one and the same, aren't they?
I wonder if flipping it 180 degrees so that it was upside down would be viable. That would have the layers in the same orientation and probably save quite a bit of material/print time.
Maybe. But you'll notice that the bottom of the frame I printed is sort of rough where the supports were attached. Printing the frame upside down would mean that there would need to be supports underneath the part of the frame where the slide rides, which would make that part of the frame rough when the supports were removed. I'm guessing that keeping that part of the frame smooth is more important.
Wild ass guess, but I’m betting that the pistol grip/magwell prints best in a vertical vs horizontal (laying on its side) position and it’s easier to clean off supports on the outside of the frame vs inside the magwell. The pistol grip is quite thin on the sides and you can’t really stack layers over that kind of a horizontal span. With additive manufacturing you need your layers to overhang the layer below, much like building an arch out of bricks or stone.
im strong, i can run faster than train
I’ve been surprised with the ability of FDM to bridge flat areas without support. I think the mag well wouldn’t be too much of a problem there, but the fine detail areas that have to mate with small parts will benefit from being printed “detail side up”.
I like some of the enhanced PLA varieties for (slightly) improved strength and ductility, like ST-PLA and PLA+. There may be others under specific brand names, but that’s what I’d look to for an application like this.
Now print an Arduino firing hand. Might want to make some extra fingers while you’re at it.
Just got back from the range, and since I still have all my fingers, goal #1 was achieved.
Goal #2, "have a functioning gun", a bit less so. It functioned, but not as well as I hoped. I shot about 20 rounds of factory and 80 rounds of my reloads. For some reason it had what appeared to be six or seven light strikes, with both the factory and reloads. If I had been thinking ahead I would've brought the factory frame that I took the barrel and slide from, to see if the problem followed the barrel and slide, but I didn't. The factory gun has been sitting in my safe for years and I don't know the last time I shot it, so the problem could very well have been with that gun and not the printed frame. I took the slide apart and nothing appears to be broken, and the slide appeared to be in battery every time it failed to fire, so I'm not sure what the cause was.
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