President's House 3D Model

Printing a model as complex as this one presented many challenges, most notably the preservation of the many ornate details and the extraction of excess powder within the structure. These challenges were compounded by the geometry and many free standing structures, such as railings, chimneys, etc.

On our initial build, many of the railings were damaged during vacuuming, depowdering and handling. For our second build, small caps were added to protect delicate railings and details from the vacuuming and handling processes.

Handling the model proved to be a difficult task for our first build as well. Many of the finer details at ground level were damaged during handling. The addition of a groundplane in the second build proved to be crucial to the preservation of the ground level details, as well as greatly improving the postprocess handling of the model.

Time and care was taken during de-powdering to ensure ornate details were preserved. The initial build had slopes that decended from various openings to the ground level to allow the powder to slide out the base of the building. Unfortunately, the powder tended to collect on these slopes. The slopes were eliminated and the ultimately successful method proved to be several vertical openings to the base of the building. This allowed powder on the interior of the building to fall out when the model was lifted. Also, the opening at the base of the building allowed us to batch multiple print jobs better by placing small objects within the building to utilize print time and volume more efficiently, as well as infiltrate the interior of the building for great strength.

Eric Maslowski (modeling, post processing)
Steffen Heise (post processing)