My high school recently got a 3D printer, and they are letting us use it for free. This boggles my mind, since it is a Makerbot Replicator, and each reel of PLA filament is $48, but I’m not complaining! The only limitation they give us is that the print has to be able to complete within the school day.
I plan to print the rocket parts I’ve been working on in Tinkercad, one segment at a time. Tell me what you think of them!
Does your school charge you to use their computers or lab equipment? I wasn’t aware schools were in the business of charging students to use technology…
@Tom_Nardi The reason I was confused about them not charging for filament is because they charge 50 cents a page if you want to use colored ink on the normal paper printers. It could be because they anticipate that the replicator won’t be used too often.
But most of the technology at my school is free. They have tons of laptops and iPads for use. We are even allowed to use our phones and connect to the school wifi to do research.
@Jacob_Mitchell Sounds like a good school.
@bryson_oneill I guess it is pretty good. I’m not aware of any of the surrounding schools are doing any of this though. I think we are some sort of pilot test for a new system.
I’m getting a 403 error on your link - are you sure you have it publicly shared?
For school projects and such they would never charge.
But printing your own personal projects, it’s easy to justify recovering costs. My local state library here has a lab like that, they charge you the cost of the fulfillment used, per gram. To recover costs and to make it accessible to as many as possible.
@Alex_Wiebe Try again. The link is in the post now.
Looks good. A couple things I can see that I would wonder about:
Nose cone / body tolerance. make sure you allow for printer error when sizing things that are meant to fit together. I haven’t measured, but make sure the inner circle protruding from the bottom of the cone is small enough after printing to fit into the body of the rocket. On my printer, that would mean making the outer diameter of the inner part 0.5-1mm smaller than the inner diameter of the outer part.
Nice looking engine bell. I’m not sure how it mounts to the rocket body - there doesn’t seem to be any attachment points.
I’m not familiar with the Replicator’s bridging capabilities. On my Printrbot Simple, I’d be nervous about some of the horizontal details on the engine.
Overall, looks good! Make sure to post some pictures of the good, bad and ugly! (The good is nice to show off - but you’re in school, so it’s the ugly that fosters real learning!)
$48 a spool is what MBI charges for a lot of their materials.
@Alex_Wiebe I guess the horizontal details would be a problem. As for the connection between the engine and rocket, I plan to glue those 2 together so the engine doesn’t have to bear much weight during the print. And I can always sand down the nosecone if it is too big to fit.
Here’s the first thing you should print on any Makerbot: http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_i3
Just reporting back on the print, it worked very nicely! It took about 3 hours and I was able to pick it up before the end of the day. There was some warping at the bottom of the fuselage and by extension the wings, so I cut them off. I am very surprised at how strong this thing is! I bet I could probably stand on it without it breaking… but I’ll try that some other time.
@Jacob_Mitchell Pics! We want pics! 
@Alex_Wiebe Alright then, I’ll go grab my camera!
Here are some pics:
missing/deleted image from Google+
Good stuff @Jacob_Mitchell (we’ll work on macro photography another day )
How does the cone fit into the body? If you print it again, will you make any adjustments for tolerances, etc?
@Alex_Wiebe The nosecone has a little circle of material that was supposed to fit onto the main body snugly, but it is a little too big. So I’m going to sand it a little.
Thought so - I’m a freelance hack. I’ve consumed a fair bit of filament trying to get that whole tolerance thing figured out. Basic rule is: You can’t put a 10mm rod into a 10mm hole. It just won’t fit. The more precise the manufacturing process, the closer to 10.00mm you can get of each measurement.
Take a look at how much you have to sand away to make it fit, divide by 2 and that is the amount of error / tolerance you have to factor into each side of the pieces for the next time you make something.