For this benchmark we had to physically build our product, and this was by far the most time-consuming and hardest benchmark. We began by making a model of the virus, we used a 3-D design application called Blendr to build the actual model and then moved it into the Tinkercad editor to resize it. I though that this would be extremely difficult, as no one in our group had experience, but it ended up going quite smoothly. We got help from one of our classmates and used some online resources to build our initial model, and then resizing was quite intuitive. Then, we had to actually print it. This was when we made the most changes to our model, as we weren't aware of some of the stipulations of the printer. We ended up downsizing the model (from 10cm to 4cm) and printing the legs of the virus separate from the body (both to save time and to make it viable to print). However, after we got it going it was all smooth sailing. Our models printed out successfully and then we just glued the legs to the body.
While we were successful there are two major things I'd change if given the chance: Firstly, I would use a different adhesive to attach the legs. We initially tried super glue but that didn't work well with the plastic so we hot glued it. Hot glue worked really well, but it didn't look very aesthetically pleasing. Second, I would've printed the legs slightly smaller as they're a tad bit too large for the body. But, overall, the model looks really great, especially for our first 3-D print! |