3D Printed Articulated Slug


This is one of those weird projects that I knew I had to try as soon as I saw the design on Thingiverse: The Friendly Articulated Slug. If you've seen similar fidget toys in stores, as I have, you understand why I was eager to see if I could get this silly thing to print.


I should mention that the first time I tried printing the slug, it failed. I followed (to the best of my knowledge) most of the recommended print settings from the designer, but the thing failed on bed adhesion and ended up a tangle of filament. The first layer didn't look right, though, so when I went to try it again, I scoured the comments (and there are a lot) for some advice.

When I came across someone who had success with the printer (Crealty Ender 3 v2) and Slicer (Cura) that I use. Set the layer height to .12mm, wall thickness to .8mm, move the z seam to the back (this setting was new to me--we had to look up how to turn on access to the z seam settings in Cura), Print speed 20 mm/s, initial layer speed 10 mm/s. All other settings at default. What all of that means is that it is going to be printed at high resolution and on a very slow setting. I also bumped up the size of my model to 150% as the original is pretty small. 



After following those suggested settings, it printed perfectly. It took 18 hours or something silly like that (we set it to run overnight), but it came out great!


I used a white PLA filament because it was what was loaded in my printer, and I had no idea if the print would work. Now that it has, I'm eager to try it even bigger and in a fun color. The slug took some twisting to get all of its segments to move freely, but once all the segments were free, it moved perfectly.


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