Yet Another Ham Callsign Plaque (YAHCP)

thingiverse

This is my very first made-from-scratch 3D printer project. After downloading several ham radio call sign projects and failing to figure out how to actually change the original call sign to my own, I used tinkerCAD to design my own...and rather than either charging people to create a customized call sign .stl file, or creating them for people, I figured I would just document how to do it yourself! See the "How I Designed This" section below for some detail on how to change the call sign etc. Printing: I have an Ender 3 Pro, so these notes apply to that printer although I'm sure they're similar for most printers. Very straightforward. You can reduce infill to 10% to speed printing and save a little plastic, but this is a pretty simple design so you can leave it at default for your printer if you wish. And dirt cheap to print--$0.36 US according to Cura! If you want to print in two colors, like the STL file shows, you will need to insert either a pause or a filament change (M600) command in the Gcode file. I use Cura for my slicer, so I was able to use the "Pause at Height" post-processing script, set for Pause at Layer and entering layer 30 into the field. Note that my Ender's firmware does not support the M600 command for some reason but the Pause at Height works great. To change colors, the printer will pause after printing the base. Remove the old filament (carefully--if you accidentally move the hotend or the printer bed, you'll mess up the print!). Then add the new filament and apply slight pressure until the new color comes out of the hotend. Then start the print again. I'm still trying to get a good dual print but I'm getting close! I should also mention that I use OctoPrint, which makes this process easier as you can easily monitor the printer status to see when it goes into a pause state, and then it's easy to start the print again after the filament has been changed.