3D Printing Parts

As you know, my good friend Prairie Peacock makes fabulous soaps. One of the things that she wants to do is to be able to add shapes to her soaps. So I built her a die to fit her extruder.

She bought an extruder and sent me the dimensions.

The first step was to make a blank die in fusion 360, a CAD software. This thing is finicky. The Husband helped me through this the first time or two.

Then we went into Inkscape, where I imported my .svg that I built earlier.

PP wanted a scale like this.

I got the dimensions and imported into Fusion. Each scale had to be imported separately (maybe if I knew the software better it could go easier). So I imported eight scales to fit on the die. It could probably be more uniform, but it will work.

You place the shape on the facet you want, then pull it through the piece to make the cutout go all the way through. Then you smooth out the edges, which is a pain in the ass.

But you end up with your .stl file that you then send to the slicer. We made this 100% fill to withstand the pressure of the extruder.

From the slicer, it goes to Octoprint, and the printer!

Forty minutes and sixty five cents later, we have a die.

And PP is gonna let me help with the soap making too!