A couple of years ago I had a CT scan of my coronary arteries done (all good ), and I got the CD with the DICOM data. I thought it might be a good project for 3D printing, but it hasn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped.
After extracting the data into a 3D model in 3D Slicer (http://www.slicer.org) and fixing it up in Autodesk Meshmixer (http://www.meshmixer.com), I’ve had a few tries at printing it in PLA on my Flashforge Dreamer.
Obviously it needs a lot of supports, and after some difficulty with tree-like supports, I got a good result with linear PLA supports, but was unable to extract the model from the supports afterwards.
I then got some PVA filament to use as the support material, but it isn’t the best material to work with, with a lot of stringing, which got into the printed model, and supports that were incomplete - don’t even mention the wall - so it was only after a few attempts, at different print orientations that I managed to get this out. For those who don’t know, an entire artery (the left anterior descending) is missing from the model but the other two came out okay.
Still some work to do. Tips, anyone?
I printed the PLA @ 200C, PVA @ 185C with print bed @40C. Layers 0.14mm, reduced print speed (60%) for PVA supports and raft.
In order to get a decent PVA support on my printer, I had to drop to 180C for the first layer and 175C for subsequent layers. Of course, my temperatures are not necessarily yours, nor are the temperatures I set going to be those at the nozzle. I’m running my PLA at 220C/215C with the same caveats as the PVA and even those numbers change with different vendors of plastic.
What sort of dimensions are shown in the photo? Without scale, it could be baseball sized or even as tiny as a jelly bean.
Thanks @Fred_U It’s to scale; here is the image I should have posted. I don’t think I can set T° differently during the print, but will a lower temp on the PVA reduce stringing? missing/deleted image from Google+
For something that fine, maybe try Meshmixer supports using the Autodesk Ember presets…you will get a ton of supports but they should be easier to snip off
), and I got the CD with the DICOM data. I thought it might be a good project for 3D printing, but it hasn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped.
