This is nice little story about 3D printing the Eiffel tower was submitted by Jerry LePore & Patricia Hardbower at Itchy Pig Creations. The Crew at 3DPrintWise would like to share it with you. First some nice photos of this 3D printing project.
The 3D Printing Plan
MakerBot Starts Printing
Upper 3D Printed Section
3D Printed Leg
3D Printed Arch
3D Printed Foot
3D Printed Stage
Glue 3D Printed Parts
The Finishd Tower
Well I purchased my 3D printer, a MakerBot replicator 2 in January this year and started printing things almost right away.
I would download things from free repositories like Thingiverse and print them. Simple objects that did not really represent a challenge. Call it my learning curve. It was not particularly steep as I had been a designer in 2D for many years and was always tinkering with mechanical things too since I was a kid. You know, building Airfix models and playing with Meccano.
After a while the novelty of printing small things wore off as one might expect. I began to look for something larger, more complex and challenging to 3D print.
As I was looking around, I came across this amazing 3D model of the Eiffel tower. A free model to 3D print from LeFab Shop. You can download the model here – Free 3D Prints on 3DPrintwise aswell.
I started printng this on March 1st. There are 12 pieces in this model which need to be 3D printed and then glued together. The shortest print time was for the top spindle which took 48 minutes and the longest pieces, the base which was split in two took 16 hours each.
During the whole process, I only had one failure when printing one of the base pieces. That was after 8hr and 22min print time. Correcting the problem, I finally finished this superb model on March 4th at 3 a.m in the morning. Yes I know it is nuts but 3D printing is seriously addictive and way better for you than smoking or drinking into the early hours.
The Eiffel tower 3d print now proudly stands in my house on the sideboard. It is 24.5 inches high and 10.75 inches at the base. I used 1.67LBS (762 grams) of ProtoType Supply silver filament. Well done Makerbot.
All my friends tell me it is really cool. Did I enjoy my holiday in Paris and how the hell did I get it from the souvenir shop and then into my suit case.
Submitted by Jerry LePore & Patricia Hardbower at Itchy Pig Creations.