I Replicated 3D Printed Chainmail
By: Valkyrie Holmes
Tags: Space, 3d Modeling, Design, 3D Printing, Art

I Replicated 3D Printed Chainmail

By Valkyrie Holmes

Close up of the underside of the “fabric”

Imagine being able to print fabric right from your own home. You could design it however you wanted on the computer and within a few hours, you have a brand new designer outfit ready to impress.

The past few months have been dedicated to deep dives into 3D printing and its applications in space. I stumbled upon an article and a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory doing printing work, specifically on 3D printed chainmail.

They designed the material to snap into place and both reflect light and absorb heat, used mainly for shielding astronauts and spaceships from flying debris and space temperatures. They’ve been working on this metallic space fabric for quite some time and they’ve narrowed it down to a series of interlocking stainless steel squares that are light, compact, and can be easily replaced.

This idea got me thinking about how hard it was to actually design and make something like that. So I got to looking online and found this video:

While it isn’t the kind of fabric you’d think of when talking about clothes or designer brands (gucci, keep up), it’s a step! The tutorial walked me through how to put together my own 3D printed chainmail and while it doesn’t have the stainless steel material or the 4D printed qualities like absorbing heat, it’s a good foot in the door for designing 3D printed models.

CAD DESIGNING

CAD stands for computer-aided design and is used to create 2D or 3D models, typically for engineering or architecture purposes. The CAD program I used was called Fusion360 and it was super versatile and gave me a lot of options to work with.

You start by clicking “New Sketch” and clicking on a plane and the program switches to that side for a clear view of the shape you’re trying to draw. I chose a circumscribed polygon that I could customize to have 6 sides. Once I got it to the desired length, I was able to extrude the image, meaning I could raise the image and give it a thickness.

I also created a series of rings to attach to one surface of my 3D printed diagram. They were positioned at an angle and they would be the things holding my model together and interlocking the hexagons. By using a circular pattern, I could copy one ring and transfer it all the way around the model while keeping it symmetrical.

I also used construction lines, which are lines drawn on the diagram to flip things over or center things on, to keep everything symmetrical. Finally, I drew circles on the other sides of the hexagon and extruded them at an angle as my connecting points (more on that later). Using another construction line and a rectangular pattern, I was able to copy the whole diagram and make multiple repetitions in each direction.

From there, I downloaded the file and transferred it over to Simplify3D with the help of a friend, a type of slicing software that is used to situate a model when 3D printing. Think of it as prep work before we can actually print. Because there were all sorts of small individual parts that had to form in “midair”, we had to add supports so that it would print properly. For other designs, you may be able to position it on the side but this one had to be flat.

A peak at my friend’s Simplify3D software

PRINTING THE MODEL

We also had to do a few things to make the model work properly for the final model. The first time we printed it, it immediately fell apart. Why? There wasn’t enough base support to withstand any movement. So what we did was we printed at an angle so that the filament was laid not just in rows, but in diagonal lines across the model. That way, when we bent it, there was less of a chance for the filament to break apart. We also printed at an angle with supports, meaning the whole model came out slightly tilted downwards. This helped with the structure as well.

Finally, it was time to print. The STL file was switched to a .gcode file and placed onto an SD card. The SD card was put into the printer and we weighed out enough PLA filament for the entire model, around 54g. It’s important to keep your filament in a dry place, as moist air makes the material brittle and hard to deal with.

We preheated the machine (model HC Maker 7) and the extruder as well as the bed. You have to heat up the bed for the material to stick to the actual surface but after about fifty layers, you can set the machine to stop the heating process and gradually cool down. We leveled the machine, attached the filament to the top, and started the print!

The whole process took around 10 hours and at the end, we had something that looked like this!

Underside with some supports still left on the model

Close up of the chainmail

The only real issue with the piece was the fact that there was a lot of support material, meaning I had to go through and remove the bottom pieces and the support stilts in the actual model but once they were all out, the model could move pretty fluidly!

This was a super fun process to start off my journey with 3D printing and I’m excited to make more models and maybe even get my own 3D printer!

Check out these articles on NASA’s chainmail!