Last night I 3D printed a model of a Canon EOS 5D Mark III. It took roughly 8-9 hours to do on a reasonably high quality setting. I’m really pleased with how it turned out. The resolution is so good, you can actually see the ridges on the wheel near the shutter (on the left-hand side of the photo) and the individual buttons on the rear of the camera (not shown). The bottom is quite “rough” from where I had to snap away the supports (that kept the lens from sagging while printing) but overall I’m impressed.

This also gave me a chance to play with the “infill” setting in the latest version of the Buccaneer 3D printer app. When printing, the printer adds in a honeycomb-like structure to the inside of the print to make it sturdier (so the inside is not completely hollow, but it’s also not completely solid) and most 3D printers let you pick this percentage. The higher the percentage, the sturdier your print will be (with less chance of roofs caving in, as was the case with my TARDIS test print), but the slower it’ll print and the more plastic it’ll use. The default for the Buccaneer is 20%. I dropped it down to 15% which shaved some time and filament use off the printing total.

My next print is going to be a “davidgray Photography” sign for an upcoming art and craft market. I’ve designed it myself in Sketchup and saved it as an STL in Microsoft’s 3D Builder app so we’ll see how that goes!