TL;DR: I created a custom Oddish planter model and printed it. I messed up a few times, but learned from it, which was pretty cool. I’m going to make some other planters too, lemme know if you want one 😉
Here’s a bunch of completed prints outfitted with airplants… I finished some of them with an epoxy sealant to make them super shiny.
Here are the details if you’re interested 😛
The biggest category of goods I’ve always wanted to make on my 3D printer involves Pokemon. I’ve seen a bunch of planters for sale on Etsy and the like, but wanted to try my hand at completing my own designs, so I did. I chose to tackle Oddish first cause it’s a popular with ‘mon with a very simple shape. This ended up being a good learning project because for the very first time on my printer, I needed to troubleshoot print settings and tweak the model to prevent failed prints.
The initial design only took about a half hour to complete, and most of the time was spent trying to finalize the face, feet, and drainage hole designs and positions. I printed the first design with supports thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal, unfortunately, it ended up being a huge pain to remove. For my next iteration, I added a plane cut to the bottom, so the model could sit flat on the table and print without support. While this worked pretty well, I wanted to see if I could improve on the overhang quality.
Then I tried printing the Oddish upside-down. Despite requiring more support material, I liked the fact that all of the areas with overhang would not be visible (except for the tips of the feet). As an additional benefit, I removed the plane cut and give Oddish a nice rounded booty. The first time I tried this though, the support broke resulting in misprinted feet. I tried re-leveling my print bed and adding extra surface adhesive—to no avail.
The breakthrough came when I modified the design, enlarging the feet and changing the angle they sat at such that the support towers started with a larger, more stable base. While I had a successful upside-down print, the support towers left a more visible mark than I envisioned. Additionally, the rounded tush was actually worse than a flat-bottomed one, since Oddish would roll around -_-. The final iteration added the plane cut back in so Oddish would be able to sit flush on the ground.
I’ll be honest–the blue/green filament I bought from Amaz3D on Amazon left me a bit wanting. I’ve had success using their plain black and plain white material before with great success. On initial inspection, the color is spot on what I need for Oddish, so I was pretty excited at the lack of post-print-painting I would need to do. However, after the prints started coming out, there are definitely some noticeable inconsistencies in the filament color, which is a bit disappointing.
The last thing I tried out with these prints was the application of XTC-3D coating to smooth out layer lines and give the parts a shiny finish. The coating is essentially just a 2-part epoxy, which you mix in a 2:1 ratio. The coating ended up being a bit thicker than I anticipated, so I’m glad I decided to wear disposable gloves. The paintbrush I used to apply the epoxy sacrificed its life to give four models a new clear coat. I let the models dry overnight on top of wine bottles, and the result is actually very impressively shiny—you can actually see your reflection in their faces :o.
I posted a little preview photo of the first print (the one with too much support) before my numerous iterations on the model, and managed to get enough interest from a few friends for commissions–yay social media! I’m super happy to say that I made the first sales of my own custom designed planters :D!! I’m excited to take the numerous lessons I learned from this project to continue making new models (Bellossom is up next) for custom planters.