As luck would have it, the friends from Brooklyn had another evening free. There was a cleaner print of a Sorting Hat waiting for the older of the two kids, but we’d never gotten around to printing anything for the younger kid.
Four year olds have less than zero patience, which meant browsing through different models and discussing options with them could be a nightmare. Fortunately we had the inside scoop on what this four year old likes: sharks. A bit of digging through Thingiverse generated a decent number of options. The cleanest and most relevant seemed to be this shark from user PlaticBits.
The model was the right size (not too big, not too small) and didn’t have many easily breakable parts or extremities. The only odd part? The model is oriented nose up, with the shark standing on its tail. I could have edited the model to make it horizontal, but I decided to trust the model maker on this one:
I think the trust was warranted: the supports for the model were minimal and easily cleaned up. Had I re-oriented the model prior to printing, the supports would have spanned the length of the body, and likely have been much harder to clean up.
Despite printing with large layers (0.35mm for a very quick print) the gills, mouth, and eyes are easily discernible.
Oh, and the shark was a big hit – the four year old didn’t put it down the entire evening.
- Source: Shark
- Original License: Creative Commons – Attribution
- Original Model: shark.STL
- GCode: Shark_0.35mm_5perc-infill.gcode
- Material: Prusa White PLA 1.75mm
- Print Date: 2017/09/04
- Print Time: 1 hour, 4 minutes
- Slicer: Slic3r PE 1.36.2
- Slice Settings:
- – 0.35mm layers (fast print)
- – 5% infill – Cubic
- – Include Supports
- Printer: Prusa i3 mk2