3D Printing - 2025 Flexi-Animals Project Completion

In May of this year we had a small group of students attempt the process of developing their own version of flexi-animals, a design idea that has proved to be one of the most enduring popular items on this blog over the last few years.

Initially their designs focussed on completing the linking successfully and the students have now been translating this back to the original target of applying the linking back to a range of animal designs.

As shown in the photographs left the blocky linking has been completed.   In this example the student wanted to focus on a cat, she has opted to develop this further and to change the facing of the head to a silhouette of a cat.   The print is supersize at present - with it being 140mm wide, 10mm thick and 120mm high at points.   This print took four hours to complete and the focus was on testing the linking.

The design was then scaled down tow a quarter size and additional prints were completed to test the viability of different PLA filament.

Of particular note was the difference between the two examples shown left which are direct copies of much larger print shown above.     The red regular PLA design was able to function as expected including being able to move with the linking - the 'rainbow' PLA (shown below) did not survive the printing process the head, body and tail separated.

This is something that we have experienced before.