Vapor smoothing is a technique for improving the surface finish of 3d-printed parts. It uses acetone vapor to smooth the surfaces of ABS prints, removing the layer lines that result from the printing process. We don’t typically use vapor smoothing at Nervous System because we 3D print in nylon via Selective Laser Sintering (you can read about how we tumble finish those pieces in this blog post). However, we do occasionally 3D print in ABS on our Makerbot, so we decided to test out vapor smoothing for ourselves. We were curious to see how the process would work on articulated 3D prints like our Kinematics@Home designs and 2-color prints like our reaction-diffusion animals.
Read full article on Nervous System blog
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!