Part orientation greatly influences the quality and the material properties of parts like its overall stregth. Rafts and Supports are very difficult to remove and so it is recommended to not use them unless absolutely necessary. An example of a 3D printed Dog with supports and rafts and then with the supports and rafts removed can be seen in the Picture. After you receive your part, you can remove the support structures. To build these parts successfully, you have to add supports when printing your part. Without any supports these features fail to print correctly as seen in picture of the printed part. Features that are not directly supported by underlying layers or the build platform are called unsupported overhangs and examples can be seen in the pictures. These are some of the simple rules to keep in mind for FDM printers (these are the printers that works on an 'additive' principle by laying down material in layers to produce a part.)īecause all your parts are built layer-by-layer, each layer that is printed must be supported by something underneath it. There are some things you need to keep in my when designing a part that is then going to be 3D printed: The aim here is not for you to make this bicycle and repeat some of the mistakes we made but to learn from them and avoid these mistakes. Through this Instructable I hope to guide you through the process of creating a print from concept to assembling the part in your project. Up to this project, I have been working with Rhino for 3D modelling, but after seeing how intuitive Fusion 360 is, and its suitability for designing 3D Printed parts I decided to make the switch, and I'm very pleased with the new workflow and experience. But, through this project we have learned quite a wealth of knowledge and gained a rather deep understanding of the many technicalities of working with a Prusa i3 FDM based 3D printer and also improved our modelling skills. It was an ambitious project, but to cut a long story short: we failed, the bicycle we created was never able to take the weight of an adult.

Prior to this project we had worked on much smaller projects with the printer and had limited experience with structural engineering. We started with the objective of making a full size functioning bicycle that had 3D printed joints that connect PVC pipes to create the frame of the bicycle. This Project was done as part of a workshop with my student and good friend Akash Hebbali.

The purpose of this Instructable is to share with the world our experiments in 3D Printing.

Stl files for 3d printing bicycles