Printing using FDM printer

[versality]

Hi Charlie,

First, I want to express my sincere gratitude for sharing this amazing project with the community. The amount of thought, engineering, and attention to detail you put into the Statial.b is truly impressive. Making it open source would allow others such as myself to explore and experiment with mouse ergonomics, which is incredibly valuable!

I'm particularly interested in building the Statial.b, but I have a question about the 3D printing requirements. I currently have a Prusa MK4 FDM printer and mainly work with PLA. While I understand you used resin printing (SLA) for the prototypes and final build, I'm curious if it would be feasible to print these parts using an FDM printer? I would love to have a resin printer, but I'm concerned about the ventilation requirements as my workshop space is limited.

Given your extensive experience with this project, what are your thoughts on FDM vs SLA for these parts? Would the ball joints and mechanical components be too compromised if printed with FDM? I'd be particularly interested in hearing about any specific challenges you foresee with FDM printing for this design.

Also, if anyone in the community has attempted to print it using FDM, it would be great if you could share your experience!

Thanks again for this incredible contribution to the community!

[PyottDesign]

Hey, thanks for your interest and support on the project!

To be honest, I haven’t ever tried printing the parts in FDM so I can’t say for sure that it wouldn’t work. There are a couple theoretical problems that would probably come up on a FDM print of the Statial.b though.

The first is the z-step height, even on higher precision FDM printers, is going to be high enough that it will probably interfere with getting good motion in the ball joints. There are a bunch of high tolerance mechanical connections throughout the design that would be an issue for FDM.

The second larger issue is that FDM prints are non-isotropic. That is, they have different structural properties when forces are put on a part from different directions. The Statial.b has very small tabs that deflect to lock up the ball joints and I’m not confident those parts wouldn’t snap off if printed as FDM.
You can usually orient parts to help with this issue during printing. Unfortunately the ball joint parts are all at different orientations on the Statial.b so if you position the part so one socket is good then one of the other ball sockets will be in a bad orientation.

I’m not sure if any of that makes any sense but I covered some of the details on this in another YouTube video on 3d printing a while back if you're curious. https://youtu.be/od67J3On4EY&t=151

All that said, I am genuinely curious how and if an FDM print would work. If you want to try a quick, low risk test to see if it would be possible, I would recommend downloading the STL files:
https://github.com/PyottDesign/Statial-b/blob/main/3d_printables/Statial-b_STL_SBv10.zip
And printing one arm (arm-static_SBv10A01_qty-03.stl) and then cutting down the top body model (body-upper_SBv10A01_qty-01.stl) so you're just printing a few sockets. If the arm and sockets lock together correctly then an FDM print might just work out.

You can also use the STEP files to get the parts without any of the lattice light weighting which will make the FDM printing much easier:
https://github.com/PyottDesign/Statial-b/blob/main/3d_printables/Statial-b_STEP_SBv10.zip

Please let me know the results if you do the test prints and good luck!