Cutting edge cancer radiation treatments are being developed using LulzBot 3D printers!
Alex Markovic is an oncologist at Northern Colorado Medical Center in Greeley Colorado. Alex and his team came up with the idea of using scans of patients to create a 3D printed “bolus” mold that conforms precisely to each patient to optimize the distribution of radiation treatments. After purchasing a LulzBot TAZ 6 and Flexydually v2 toolhead to test their designs, Alex and his team have received 3D Printer training and consulting from IT-Works 3D to improve their skills and results. It’s been a pleasure to do a small part to move this new medical treatment forward!
This enclosure ships as a kit, allowing you to print the mounting brackets in your choice of colors, and the lightweight, removable panels allow convenient access to the printer when you need it.
How do you get a reptile snake skin appearance in a 3D print? We stumbled onto a cool method!
I was printing a combat robot chassis and stumbled upon this happy accident of a snake / reptile skin effect. To get durability in a bot for the “plastic ant” class, with its 1lb weight limit, and requirement that chassis and weapons must be 3D printed using only PLA, ABS or PETg, I used Chroma Strand Labs INOVA-1800 translucent green 3D printer filament, mainly because it looks cool- Watch for translucent green in Chroma Strand Labs’ value priced INOVA-2008 PETg soon!
3d print of a combat robot chassis in translucent green INOVA-1800 filament and cubic infill. I didn’t start out to have it look like a snake- the pupils in the engraved eyes were originally round, but when I saw another print of the wheel skirts and noticed the reptile pattern, I hopped back in Fusion 360 and quickly changed them to snake eyes!
The LulzBot Mini made a beautiful print, and the build volume was “just right” for a plastic ant. A good rule of thumb- If you need a LulzBot TAZ‘s build volume, your ant is going to be too heavy (ask me how I know..).
Angle view to show infill pattern
I created the model in Autodesk Fusion 360 (free for maker / student / non-commercial use!!) which has been an easy to use yet staggeringly powerful 3D modeling tool for quickly iterating through designs. The cloud sync makes it a snap to move between computers!
Side view- check out those nice unsupported overhangs!
The key to is the infill pattern. I was experimenting with different infill patterns in the new CURA 2 LulzBot Edition Alpha and chose cubic for it’s strength. By happy accident, the combination of the translucent green INOVA-1800 and cubic infill yielded this cool pattern! Pictured don’t really do it justice as the surface is shiny, and the pattern shifts as it catches the light.
Rear view. The engraved text came out pretty well!
ABS is a staple 3D printer filament that’s versatile, strong, heat resistant, and inexpensive. Chroma Strand Labs brings you a new level of performance, quality, and fantastic color saturation with new American made HIGH IMPACT ABS!
Chroma Strand maintains stringent controls for dimensional accuracy, and uses premium dye packages to ensure impressive colors (seriously, the photos don’t do it justice, we need better photog skills!) and consistent printing color to color and batch to batch. If you want shiny, deep colors in ABS, this filament should be your new go-to.
Yes, this deeply saturated, rich orange is just like a certain local major sports team uses!Golden rich deep orange-yellowYep, that sports team’s blue tooBlack is so hard to photograph. Suffice to say this is a really satisfying deep black
New Inova-2008 PETg 3mm 3D printing filament is made in the USA by Chroma Strand Labs and only $40/kg with free shipping!
PETg is one of the hottest new 3d printing filaments, featuring:
Shiny!
Easy printability
Low Emissions
High Strength
Very High Dimensional Accuracy
Very Low Warping and Splitting
This means it’s a great fit for anyone that wants strong, good looking prints that “just work”.
Inova-2008 joins Chroma Strand Labs Inova-1800 Amphora Co-Polyester as a premium quality filament. Chroma Strand blends and extrudes it themselves to give you:
Low dye % across all colors
Stringent tolerances for consistency of diameter and concentricity
Premium filament bases
Why do these matter? Dye doesn’t print the same as the filament base. Chroma Strand Labs goes to the extra expense to keep dye composition low so their filament prints the same color to color and batch to batch.
Check out these great new translucent colors of Inova-1800 now only $70/kg, also with free shipping!
Translucent Yellow a.k.a. Lemonade!Translucent Red, a.k.a. WatermelonTranslucent OrangeTranslucent GreenTranslucent Blue
If your 3D printer filament is not feeding correctly, or you hear clicking coming from the extruder, the ridged feed bolt “hobbed bolt” may have plastic fragments wedged into its ridges that push the filament into the extruder, and may need to be cleaned. This short video shows you how to clean the hobbed bolt on a LulzBot 3D printer, and may prove helpful in cleaning other 3D printer extruders. Click through for a short video showing you how!
