Did you know that it’s entirely possible to 3D print directly on to wood?
I really like the texture on the bottom of prints. With all kinds of beds, tape, etc. the bottom is always my favourite part of the print. The other day I tried a print using wood-filled PLA, and was pretty unhappy with the results… it feels nice, but the overall look is just some poo-brown plastic. I woke up the next day with an idea: could I 3d print directly onto a sheet of wood, and get some kind of wood texture on the bottom of the print?
tl;dr: yes you can print on wood, no it doesn’t get you cool wood grain swirls, yes it can do some cool stuff when combined with laser etching!
I laser cut a 220x220 sheet of 1/8" plywood. I realized later that’s the printable area of the bed, not the full bed size:
It clips down to the bed just like a glass bed would. I re-ran the mesh bed leveling routine twice - the first time it hit one of the clips.
and then voila! it prints! I had to live-adjusted the Z to get a good squish, which is why the skirt isn’t fully adhered:
The first print was too small to see much detail, so I redid it with a larger object:
Adhesion was awesome! It stays down well and comes off with a scraper and a little bit of effort. Similar to the adhesion you’d get with blue painters tape. Didn’t visually seem to damage the wood at all.
Bottom texture:
This is where the project fell down for me. It’s got a texture, but it’s not very wood-like. I’d like to try this again with a more interesting textured piece of wood - but it turns out a lot of wood’s beauty is in the coloration, which doesn’t transfer.
For my next experiment, I wanted to try a laser-etched piece of wood - to see if the image would transfer well to a 3d print.
A quick trip to the hackspace later, I had a gentle etch of some symbols and my company logo onto the wood print bed:
Aaand start printing:
Print didn’t work as well as the last one. I forgot to re-do the mesh bed leveling… I think I changed the orientation of the plywood? The transfer works, but it’s quite sensitive to the bed level. Also, you have to mirror the image when you etch it, or it’ll be mirrored on the print. Oops!
It had a hard time with the very small text, but the larger lettering shows up pretty well. The laser etch varies quite a bit in depth, I guess due to variations in the wood? On the wood it doesn’t really matter because depth AND burning combine to make the image show up - in plastic, only the depth matters.
Further ideas:
- Different woods - thicker pieces probably work. I went with thin laser plywood because I wanted the wood to heat up, but given how well it adheres, unheated probably works fine!
- Try upping the extrusion rate on the first layer to get a better image (@Hekseskudd’s suggestion).
- More aggressive/deep etchings and multi-level etches
- Direct-to wood sign printing?
- Non-planar printing directly onto driftwood???
- Invert the etch, to deboss (indent the image) instead of embossing it as I did (image sticks out).
- Etch a repeating pattern instead of a logo, image, or text
- ???
- Profit!
Ok that’s all!