3D printed business cards

Andy

Andy

Controlled Chaos
Staff member
Well, I have some extrusion issues to figure out (and should probably get closer to our actual colors), but 3d printed business cards are totally doable. According to OctoPrint, this cost about $.16, and it took about an hour to print one. I assume that'd become faster per-print with more on the build plate.
PXL_20220726_054211816.jpg
The base color is only 3 layers thick, and then there are ~5 layers of black, so they're a fun mix of flexible and rigid.

Thanks for the tip about dropping JPGs directly into Cura, @DrNezbit!
 
Awesome!! Looks good! You're welcome. What worked for me was to try to inset the lettering with a lighter color text instead of having it print on top from a darker. I'd suggest maybe throwing a black layer in as layer 2 and insetting the smaller print. I had issues with having a flexible back and the rigid lettering popping off of the name tags too. Took me a lot of playing with the shades to get the depth right, but a grey scale hex chart helped a lot. I also couldn't seem to get a QR code to scan if I printed it any smaller then 50mm
 
Oh, here's the template I made for the name tags too. I just used a lighter shade of grey for the text then the center, then did my filament change just after the last solid layer. I made the background white and set that to the lowest point at 0.00mm so I could just get the shape of the name tag instead of the shape of the image to print. The highest point where the black is I made 1.00mm tall I believe, maybe 1.5mm. They turned out pretty well. Made and sold some last Christmas. Was the first thing I was able to design myself to be able to sell
test2.jpg
Sam.jpg
That was how I kept the lettering from popping off, just did the switch right before it started printing the name layer. Could swap again after the center too to give a nice highlight to the ring

I also found a setting in Cura called "Print Sequence" that I had to add from settings, but it allows you to print the standard all at once or one at a time. For multiple prints that are shorter I've been using it with good results. You don't get the retractions or stringing between models, and if one fails, usually you at least got some finished first

There's also a grey box around the models that shows the head movement area, and settings for the printer to define the size of your print head too. Would make for a lot of color swapping for those though.
 

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Those name tags look great! Thanks for the tips about typesetting. I'll keep poking around with this and see what I get. I think I like the "outset" style of text more, because when the cards are flexible they're really fun. It has always given my printer trouble, though. Although, in this test, the inset text at the bottom was completely blown away, so who knows how that will go. Fortunately, I did have really good adhesion and nothing was breaking off, even as I flexed it a bunch. I'll start my testing by messing with wall thicknesses/flow and go from there.

That's good to know about the size for QR codes--we might not be able to get these to work at all. I just ended up pulling the finished jpg from the site and dumped that into Cura for this test. I'm working on a grayscale one now that's specifically for printing in 3D. Of course, I also added a third color, because why make it easy on myself :)
 
That's also cool about the printer sequence setting--I've wondered about something like that feature, but never looked for it.
 
Nice! Looking good. I always had trouble with the smaller text too. Not sure why exactly I could do all the little qr code dots perfect, but the lettering I would get the same issue with under extrusion. Bolding it might help a bit, and maybe setting your retraction extra prime amount up a little. I've been using 0.1mm³ and noticed it helps a bit after a series of a lot of small retractions. It may over extrude a bit if you don't have many retractions and the travels aren't as far though.
 
Oh yeah! When you bring the 2d picture into Cura there's a setting for "Smoothing" that's at like 15% by default. I had a little better outcome on raised text turning it all the way down to 0
 
Yeah I turned the smoothing off. I haven't started messing with extrusion yet, but I am noticing that every time I change the filament, it smashes into the previous layer. I think it's disabling the motors, so every time I change the filament, I bump the Z axis just a bit.
 
I've been manually retracting after the purges when I do a filament change, and then letting it start printing just a touch and manually push it back from my retraction. If I can time it right and not press it back in too much it works pretty well. Every time I do a filament change and don't, I get a big blob when it comes back to the print though
 
Well this has been a friggin labor of love if I've ever seen one lol. I finally got the cards designed in a way that the QR code was big enough and the text was bold enough that it can go through a printer while still mostly looking like our design. I also got the print settings well-tuned enough that I think anyone can make them if we post the image and a set of recommended instructions.
View attachment PXL_20220727_070805196.LS.mp4

I'm actually pretty happy with it--it's legible but not too crazy, it isn't too expensive to make (octoprint estimates $.16 each, including filament and power), and it's not that hard to make (ok, 3 filaments across 6 layers is a bit much, but that's optional--you can make them in one color if you wanted). It's sturdy, but still bends like paper, with a ton of texture. They're pretty fidgetable.
View attachment PXL_20220727_072853792.LS.mp4

All that said, I'm looking for 2 things:
  1. Feedback on the design. This took a lot of work, but most of it was understanding what it took to make business cards functional and repeatable. Now that I have that, changing the design shouldn't be too difficult. I don't know that I love the design currently, so please let me know what you think.
  2. Someone to make a test print to make sure my settings are sane and we can actually put them out there.
Anyone up for it?
 
That came out so cool! I think these are way more interesting than a regular card.
I definitely would like to give printing them a try!

I am curious to see this done on the prusa MMU2 as well, i suspect they are much cooler with layered colors than as a actually flat design but I guess the MMU2 could do it either way and not require the manual intervention.

If I can suggest some rounded corners in the design it would make them a little more wallet friendly.

There isnt a ton of space left in the design but it might be cool to feature some ornate holes to really accentuate that its 3d printed. Maybe if the logo text itself was just negative space? I am probably more focused on the potential technical features of a 3d printed business card than actually designing something good :p
Negative space letters would leave us having to do the stencil supports for the counters of the letters but maybe just a negative space Abbreviated logo could be worked in so its just the HM and not letter counters to support.
 
I was thinking a hole would be neat too. That way it could be hung on a keychain or hooked somewhere. Maybe something smaller... like I could see it in the top hole of the B in Humboldt maybe. Or to go along with the idea negative space idea, maybe make the inside part of all the letters empty? Idk, that may look weird though
 
Rounded corners was something I tried, and it just made me sad. I didn't think about holes, though, that would be super cool. The issue is that I'm using cura's lithopane feature, so both of those get ignored (more accurately, counted as just one layer thickness). I thought about making a proper STL, but I don't know F360 enough to make that work for details like the QR code (/couldn't immediately get the QR to export as SVG from InDesign), and I want the cards to stay as thin as possible (I'm pretty sure I could accurately make something .4mm thick in F360, but I've never tried). If that's doable, I'd definitely be down for trying it out. I also had an idea for 2-sided cards that would free up a lot of space without adding extra thickness, but again, lithopane.

All that said, I think it's pretty immediately obvious that these are 3d printed, even to a layperson--they have pretty visible layer lines, a range of textures and bendability, a really satisfying plastic "click" when played with/dropped, and are pretty deeply embossed to 2 different depths.

Like I said, of one of you guys want to give a crack at designing something in an STL, or if you wanted to work together to make one, I'm super down! I can get the QR code and logo to you in any format you need to make it happen; just lemme know.
 
I would definitely like a copy of the 2d image you made to give it a shot. I never tried the lithopane setting, just regular. Adding holes and rounded corners I don't think should be too hard though if made white and white depth set to 0mm. That's how I got the name tags rounded and the hole for the keychain to go through. My initial thought was to try to reinforce the hole with a raised area around it, but that turned out to make a weak point by making it to stiff and cracking when bent. I don't know any 3d design software either, but I remember when playing with autocad in 2008 that you could design a 2d like floorplan and then give the base lines a height of the wall or whatever. I'm wondering if we were able to design a 2d image of the front and back if we could give them height and put them together somehow to make a stl. My laptop can barely run Cura, it's so slow I feel like windows 95 is running it 🤣 so I haven't even tried 3d imagining. I do mostly everything I can from my phone (including my Python programming) and haven't found anything for Android that I can draw in to make a .stl.

Could try flipping it and printing the back directly into the back, but that would take some precise alignment when flipping and re securing it to the build plate. The mushrooms base I just kind of eyeballed to the center of the qr code (and the glue stick outline helped) but I also had the edges to tape it down too. I'm not sure if glue stick would hold it down well enough on the front side to print on the back
 
🤔 ...what if we were to make a front and back in a single image and have the center line be one layer thick? Would it be bendy enough to allow for a fold in half into the business card shape without breaking? If not bent, maybe heated, bent, glued, and then folded?
 
This would actually be a good project to do in the free and web app TinkerCAD as well. You can bring SVG into tinkered and extrude them to dimension really easily. If you can attach the raster for the image I can throw it through vectormagic to get the SVG.

You can definitely make stuff as small you want in fusion 360. You want to pay attention to "detect thin walls" and other slicing features though when you slice the models because if they think your 0.4mm is smaller than an extrusion they often remove it form the slice.

The sound of them stacking on the table is good, better than poker chips even!
 
🤦🏻‍♂️ i didn't think about setting the base height to 0. That's so obvious in retrospect lol. I'll post the image/directions as-is when I'm at the computer, but I'll also play with the source and the grayscale depth map a bit more and see what I can do.

Making it two-sided by opening it and then folding it in post is super interesting, but my gut says it'd be hard to get them to bend without having a weird bend along one side. It might be better to print them as fully two separate cards and then glue them together.
 
OK. First off, I've attached the image I've been using for this. Here's how I've been printing them:

When importing into Cura
  • Height: .8mm 1.2mm
  • Base: .4mm 0mm
  • Width: 50.8mm
  • Depth: 88.9mm
  • Darker is higher
  • Color model: linear
  • 1mm transmittance: 50%
  • Smoothing: 0

Print settings
  • Temperature:
    • Hotend: 185°/190° initial layer temp (the separate temperature probably isn't necessary; I am just printing it a bit colder than what my filament usually likes in an attempt to control stringing, so I want good bed adhesion)
    • Bed: 70°
  • Quality:
    • .2mm layer height
  • Retraction:
    • retraction minimum travel: .5mm (this setting probably made the most difference in the quality of the text and QR code)
  • Cooling:
    • As much as you can throw at it, for the whole print
  • Adhesion:
    • I just used a skirt; you could probably make this with no adhesion assistance. If you're having issues, I'd recommend a brim, but it seems like it'd be a pain to trim off (especially if it brimmed inside the QR code, around the "HM").
You should end up with 6 layers. I add a pause at layer 2 and layer 4 to do a filament change, but 2 colors (with only the one pause at layer 4) also looks good. I haven't tested it with 1 color, but I expect that the QR code would be hard to use. Let us know if you try it!

Also, these have a lot of opportunity for failure, mostly revolving around bed adhesion. Do everything you can to make it adhere as well as possible--hit the bed with some rubbing alcohol before every print, don't let a breeze hit it, etc.
 

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