Print-in-place Pin Screen Toy

thingiverse

This is a variation of the classic pin screen toy that prints in one piece, something I wouldn't have thought possible with consumer FDM printing until I got my Prusa Mk3. It's a long and challenging print, but it's fun and an impressive demonstration (if it works!). There are three files: round pins (small test), which is the first to print to ensure things are working before printing the big guy; round pins (big), a big pin screen with round pins; square pins (big), the same thing but with square pins, which slices and prints faster in my experience. Print with 20% infill and no supports. I printed with 0.35mm layers for speed. There shouldn't be any advantage in printing with thinner layers, but it might decrease pin friction which would be nice. Depending on how great your printer is, you might need to push the pins a bit to get them unstuck the first time. If yours are really tight, you can use needlenose pliers to slightly twist and push each pin to get each unstuck. But that's tedious, and you should consider increasing the tolerance in the SCAD file (or complain in comments and I'll make one for you). Anyway, if yours works, congrats on your great printer! The OpenSCAD file is fun to play with and you can try different parameters. Unfortunately, I don't remember the parameters I used to generate these STLs but they're close to what's saved in the SCAD file right now. This pushes the limits of what's possible with FDM, and making a more fun pin screen (tighter spacing, smaller pins, thinner frame) probably requires printing using another technology. As a next step, I want to make the SCAD file take a greyscale image depth map which specifies the resting height of the pins. So it could still be used as a toy but in resting state it could show an object/promote a cause.