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Print In Place

There is a bunch of stuff that you print, take off the bed, and they move. Swords that will extend with a flick of the wrist or a truck with wheels that spin, or a toaster that lets you pop up the toast.

All of these things require that our printer put plastic where it is supposed to go and nowhere else. Lots of printers do not do this out of the box.

Some print in place things have a gap of .1mm between parts. If the printer makes one part .05mm too big and the other .06mm off, they overlap and have no hope of moving, without a great deal of force and a great deal of luck that the plastic breaks in the right place.

For the swords the seams can be a big problem. A lot of printers will have a little blob at the start/end of a layer, not a problem when it’s in the back of a vase. More than enough to touch the next bit of the sword and stop it moving.

There are several tests you can print to see how well your printer does. One of them is https://www.printables.com/model/945211-clearancetolerance-gauge-pip Before you try a PIP dragon do one of these to see if your dragon will move after printing. If you design your own things do a small print to see if the stuff that should move does.

If you find you can not do the thing you want, try fixing stuff to have your printer be better. There is no simple answer to how do I make my sword work. Lots of parameters can affect it and lots of stuff on the printer can be a problem. These are often advanced models. You can not bring a printer home, open the box, slice a sword, and have it work, unless you are real lucky.