First Useful 3D print

Today I finished my first usefull 3D print. The machine you see on the left is our coffee machine. Once in a while it needs cleaning and then there is water coming from the two nozzles left and right. Since there is not much space and it is quite a lot of water coming out of it, my wife usually has to pay attention since she has to empty the stuff she used to put under there half way. But it always is a bit messy. So we came up with the idea to make custom made compartments to hold the water.

As you can see in the picture on the right this is quite a large object already for the printer. It also took about 20 hours to print each of them. I designed the whole thing in Cinema 4D by the way and then exported to STL format. It is really nice to be able to make something like this just from software I already know :) Yesterday we did the first cleaning cycle with them and it worked out really fine. So another project finished.

It might look easy by the way, but I can assure you that this project took a lot of time. I also had a misprint where the PLA on the role got tangled :( So after 15 hours of printing or so, I could start all over again. So far every time I walk away from a print, something goes wrong. So I now plan my prints when I'm at home the whole day. So yes... 3D printing is nice. But it is time consuming and you need to know what you are doing. I'm really looking in to a more professional printer now, to hopefully get better quality and less hassle. I'll keep you posted :)