Fully 3D-printable wind-up car gift card
DESCRIPTION
You can make you friends happy by giving them a nice present and at the same time you can show them what is possible with 3D-printing. I created an easy instruction manual to add to the realism of building a real model kit.
DETAILS
See my latest Davinci catapult gift card here: https://bbprojects.technology/blogs/projects/3d-printable-davinci-catapult-gift-card
You can chose to print the 2 gift cards to give them to someone as a gift or to just assemble it yourself and relive some of your childhood. You can also print all the parts separately so you don't have to remove any card material. The whole car can be assembled without the need for any glue.
The print time for gift card 1 (the one with the most parts) is about 4 hours. The print time for gift card 2 (the one with the wheels) is about 2 hours. I decided to print them with 100 percent infill because there wasn't that much of a difference with 25 percent infill, the print time was about the same. Another reason for 100 percent infill is that the spring is being printed better. I tried to arrange all the parts on the card so that it is possible to print the 2 cards in 2 different colors and still look good (eg: not 1 wheel on one card and the 3 others on the other card).
The original idea to make a 3D-printable gift card came from the Christmas reindeer model that I saw on a website. I thought it would be very nice to design a gift card with some mechanical pieces so you could show people what is possible with 3D-printing (combination of gears, springs, clickers). Everything is build up from scratch. Mainly because all the parts had to be relatively flat in order for it to become a card.
I used fusion 360 to design all the parts, mainly because it has an easy to use gear generator and because (in my opinion) fusion is a very user friendly program.
Printer used:
Flsun Q5
Supports:
No
Resolution:
0.15
Infill:
25-30%
CuraEngine settings:
*4h print time is achieved with a print speed of 65-70mm/s, 0.15mm layer heights and an infill of 25 percent.
Video:
FILES
STL-files and the Fusion 360 source files can be downloaded here: https://bbprojects.technology/stl-fusion-360-source-files/fully-3d-printable-wind-up-car-gift-card-files
Fully 3D-printable wind-up car manual can be downloaded here
COMPONENTS
| QUANTITY | COMPONENT NAME | |
| 1 | × | 3D-printed parts, see Files section above. |
@Julie Myers, Delta printers are generally faster than regular cartesian printers with the Flsun Q5 able to print at speeds of up to 200mm/s. This said there are a lot of different variables other than print speed that affect the total print time. For example: number of shells used, infill, solid top and bottom thickness, use of skirt or brim, layer resolution. I ran the card to the slicer again and got to 4h when using a print speed of around 65mm/s, 25 percent infill and a resolution of 0.15mm. I added screenshots of my print settings to this article. Hope this helps and have fun printing ;-)
I have an Ender 3 V2. Card 1 took my printer about 15 hours, the card 2 is taking 6 hours. Is the Flsun Q5 just a super fast printer or do you think I have a setting wrong?
@Gary Baker, You’re right I did forget to add the updated manual to the files. I added the manual and attached a txt file with some more info. You should’ve received an email with a link to the updated files. Thank you!
Observation after assembly: The old car is not fully compatible with the new car. The old frame is different, with a cross brace less and the key card requires support to print. Documents are confusing. The assembly document in the download is for the old car and does not show spacers. Use the doc on this site for the new car. Note that the front and rear axles are different. It helps to put the far side wheels on in step 2 to hold the axles on. Nice job on the new car improvements.
@Gary Baker The updated cards include minor improvements to tolerances, updated turn shaft, added spacers, more rigidity etc… . The orientation of the Z-axis in Fusion 360 might’ve been different? I wouldn’t know why your slicer would add excessive travel to your print, i have the same problem with the spring section, still don’t know why it does that haha.