3D Printing a Tea Pot
In late January 2017, I had an opportunity to work on making a 3D printing project from scratch and actually print it out.
It was a long, difficult process. I had no license to use Rhino, the class-taught program, so I went to an alternative lab for this assignment — Dabble Lab in Maple hall. Luckily, there are plenty of printers available, and unfortunately, the only available program is SolidWorks, the evil that brought me weeping and tears.
Why I made a tea pot?
As you can see in pictures attached to this blog, I made a tea pot! I love drinking tea. I attended several tea ceremony in China before, learning the history, culture behind each different type of tea, and it was fascinating. I have always dreamed about maybe I would have a chance here in Seattle, that I could sit around in a warm afternoon, boil some tea in an authentic tea pot and have a cup of amazing afternoon tea.
I haven’t got the chance yet, so much that it became a complex (even obsession of mine). 3D printing assignment that I get to print basically anything? Tea pot it is!
3D Printing File
Again, it was my first time working on 3D Printing. I had no idea what to create, so I decided to wander on YouTube to find some inspirations and maybe great tutorials.
Boy was I wrong.
YouTube tutorial video was actually good. It covered the basic techniques, extrusion, revolving and more. The difficult part is playing with SolidWorks.
SolidWorks has many hidden shortcut keys that it does not display on the program. In order to figure out what is going on, I need to spend about 5 hours to watch a 5minute-long YouTube tutorial. Though the process was lengthy, I felt really happy and proud to see the final result file.
By the way, the cylinder inside of the tea pot is a tea-leafs-place section. In some traditional Chinese tea pot, there is this little tea-leafs section, because people use leafs instead of tea bags. I thought it was a good place to use extrusion technique.
Frustration — It was not fun
This is the final result.
As you can see, there is one extra, mysterial layer on the top of the tea pot. I don’t know where it came from, but for some reason, it is here.
So I turned to a 3D Workshop Lead here at Area 01. It turned out that it’s the SolidWorks. SolidWorks can’t tell the difference between shell and thin layer. Also, it is very “smart” that it extract the parts it thinks is extra and add parts that it thinks is necessary.
In the end, since all the printers are already pre-booked at this point, I could no longer reiterate the design process. So I fixed the STL file in SolidWorks, but did not print the new version out.
What I wish I had known
As the mistake I made, I hope that I had understood more how SolidWorks works. The essential part is that I wish I knew how SolidWorks handles the difference between shell and thin layer.
Things I enjoyed about the process
Though SolidWorks stabbed me in my heart, I actually did enjoying the printing process.
Watching my work gets printed bit by bit is surprisingly satisfying. I couldn’t wait to see the result (though the result was not ideal).
Pros and Cons of SolidWorks
Pros:
Though I don’t recommend SolidWorks, compare to its competing products such as Rhino, there are some good things about it.
First of all, it’s effective. It’s professional enough that it gets the work done.
Secondly, it’s free in Area 01. It is always nice not in need of buying an extra permit or license to get work done.
Cons:
I think I could go on and on about how much I don’t like SolidWorks, but I will just mention two pain points about this program.
First, it’s difficult to learn. There are a lot of tutorials online about how to use SolidWorks. However, SolidWorks actually update quick and frequent enough that a lot of the tutorials might not be as helpful. Also, since there are so many hidden shortcut keys, it is hard to follow as well.
Also, it’s unclear what’s a shell and what’s a thin feature. SolidWorks generates files in an ambiguous way that it is unclear what it is planing on printing out. I hope it has a virtual “sample” printing feature so users can see what it’s generating.
