At Craven Community College, we have a Dimension printer that prints in ABS plastic. We mostly print things with the "sparse - low density" option, so the machine prints the insides of the object in a lattice (almost like a honeycomb).
The parts are strong enough that I once stood on something to show off, balanced on one foot like the crane technique (so my whole 180+ lbs was on the 2" top of the part) and it didn't break. (It
did show stress marks, so I didn't do it again.)
We printed a mold for the school composites lab, so they could make a carbon fiber object in the shape of a speed bump, and show off how heavy a truck they could park on hollow carbon fiber. The mold itself saw a lot of stress, because once the carbon fiber was cured in the autoclave, it was stuck to the mold by a vacuum. The students have to pry out the carbon fiber with a metal bar to break the vacuum, and they could tell they were damaging this plastic mold, but they got over 2 dozen uses out of the mold before it was reduced to unusable condition. Then, they cut open a cross section to see the nifty lattice inside. For many of them, that was when they realized the plastic wasn't solid (regardless of how many times I'd told them). That mold was the biggest single object we'd ever printed, and I think I calculated that the it used about $120 of model material (about half a cartridge).
If they want such a mold again, the CAD instructor agreed with me that we should print it with the "sparse - high-density" setting to get more uses out of it. That setting will make the mold more expensive, and I'd guess it'll use about 3/4 of the cartridge. They might do it to see how many uses they get out of it, and whether it's more cost-effective than the low-density mold.
We've never used the option to print a solid object.
Last week I drew up and printed a cup holder for my 1992 240SX. It's supposed to fit in place of the ash tray, which is where I've been putting cups for years.
However, as the car is at a shop for replacement of the broken (not worn out) clutch, I haven't test fitted the cup holder to the car yet.
I
have test fitted fast food cups to the cup holder. Everybody's "small" cup has almost identical dimensions (including taper). I think I got the taper of the cup holder wrong, because cups don't go all the way down. I hope to correct it in my AutoDesk Inventor file, and print another one (in
red!) before I move.
EDIT: Cup holder doesn't fit the car. Need to make big changes and try again.
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