For UB THD’s Zodiaque Dance show we are integrating LED’s into 12 costumes, split into 2 different dance pieces and costume designs. I am part of the special topics class and am taking a leadership role on this project.
For our first sub project, Alex Farley @adfarley and I, designed the case that will hold the electrical components and go into a mic pouches under the dancers’ costumes.
We figured that 3D printing would be a better manufacturing method than buying a case and retrofitting it to suit our needs. Jon Shimon @jonshimon, the professor/mentor on this project, has a Printerbot Simple in his office so the plan was to print them all there.
The Inventor assembly shown has placeholder parts for the rough geometry of the components that need to fit in our case, and we designed the bottom and lid around those constraints.
We had issues with getting our part to adhere to the plate when printing the first time. After a lot of cleaning, z-height, and tension adjustments we switched the filament to one that hadn’t been sitting out for a year. We were able to get a full case printed, but it was un-acceptably warpy. So ... we decided to use the engineering prototyping lab on campus instead.
In the end though, they turned out pretty great!