PLA frogs with and without cooling fan (experiment)

myminifactory

We 3D printed two of MorenaP's treefrogs, one with a cooling fan and the other without. We wanted to show how important it is to have a cooling fan when printing with PLA plastic by comparing our results. The right frog was perfect because we turned on the cooling fan while it was being printed, but the left one wasn't good at all, even though it had the same model and file as the other one. The only difference between them is that the left frog's cooling fan was off, which let the PLA plastic cool down by itself without any air blowing onto its surface. This caused some bad distortions in the shape of the plastic after it came out of the nozzle. In short, having a cooling fan makes all the difference! If you want to try this at home, just go to MakerBot MakerWare and create a new profile. Then edit it by changing the line that says "doFanCommand": true to false. Save your changes and print the model with the cooling fan off. References: PLA Blue Frogs - Layer Thickness Comparison Plate: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:69351 MorenaP's Treefrog: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18479 By Creative Tools Home - YouTube - Things - #3DBenchy - Google+ - Twitter - Facebook - Instructables - Instagram - Pinterest - Flickr - LinkedIn