Now, if it just comes down to two materials; One rigid, One flexible and it can be done on a ( fairly standard ) FDM machine, my main concern is the kind of design software that can model the differing physical properties of the materials so that the desired overall affect can be achieved. Do any of your guys know of a design package that contains this kind of physical modelling?
Any other advice - Such as "Don't touch it with a ten foot pole! It's a nightmare!" - would be very welcome too! :-D
9 years, 5 months ago
Extruding very different property materials in the same print is not easy, but not impossible ;-)
Happy printing!
What I'd like to do is like this:
Imagine you've got a thin-walled rubber tube with rigid rings at both ends. Say it's 4" diameter. Now, instead of simply being rubber, the wall thickness varies in some areas and there are also rigid "plates" integrated into the wall of the tube, so that, when one ring is held still and the other is stretched away from it, the tube now forms a shape, other than a simple tube. Now it's got bulges and curves, dictated by the placement of the rigid elements and thicker bits. What I'm after is a design front-end that will model the physical properties of the materials and allow me to design the desired shape. Does that make any sense?? :-D
You could build your own model, using something like this: http://mw.concord.org/modeler/showcase/
Or, maybe using Simulink / Matlab. Matlab is very good to simulate physical behavior.
However, you would have to build the model.
I, instead, would go by a more empirical process of trial an error :-)
Good Luck!
I'll check out Solidworks and see what I can do. :-)