3D Printing Architectural Models

Jasper is our in house 3D printing expert. He dials in new materials and printers and works with customers to optimize materials. He's our go to guy for settings and printer information and knows how to optimize builds and 3D printing workflows. 

Its important to us to have contact with customers directly to learn from them. We want to know what people are printing with our materials, what settings they're using and what issues they're having. We also want to know how to improve our materials and what new materials we can use in order to optimize them and commercialize them. 

Jasper does all of this. He recently worked on with a client on a fun project in 3D printing an architectural model. We thought it would be fun to share. De Biase Architecten BNA wanted to 3D print a model of the Watertorenplein in Zandvoort on an Ultimaker 2. 

For the print Jasper used our white PLA. Jasper used an Ultimaker 2 with an Olsson block. The Olsson block is a great little add on to Ultimakers because it lets you switch nozzles easily. This is not only handy when a nozzle is blocked but let Jasper switch between a bigger and smaller nozzle on this print. Jasper printed out lower resolution parts with a larger nozzle and then switched to a finer nozzle for higher resolution parts. He did this to save time. 

This was needed because the total 3D print time was 180 hours. Jasper used 80mm/s as a print speed. Many people use much slower speeds for highly detailed prints but in this case 80mm/s was a speed at which he could deliver a high quality large print. Using PLA also in this case meant that he would not need to use additional glueing or fasting on large prints to prevent model warping. 

 The architect Remo de Biase designed the model in Archicad. He subdivided the model into 20 by 20 CM blocks so that each would fit inside the Ultimaker 2. The architect is a friend of a friend and Jasper wanted to see if he could print the entire thing in a week using 3 Ultimaker 2's at our office. In 7 days the project was completed with 180 hours of print time, 3.5 Kilos of PLA and 27 20 by 20 CM blocks of architectural model. We think that this is a great example of how to use desktop 3D printers to produce a high quality architectural model.