3D printed business cards

Here's the greyscale chart I used for designing the name tags. Took some playing with to get the layers right, but those all seemed to be enough to give a layer difference at 1mm. I didn't try them all back to back, but would be interested to see how it sliced that image with the same settings to see which is how many layers
967347c843ab817b45d3292949afed8d.jpg
 
Ooh these are super helpful. The image I just posted uses pure white (255,255,255), 50% gray (127,127,127), and pure black (0,0,0). Here's one that I mocked up pretty quickly that could use white for transparency (setting the base to 0 and the height to 1.2mm on import to cura; everything else stays the same). It uses 33% gray (170,170,170) and 66% gray (85,85,85) instead of 50%, and Cura seems to have sliced it fine. It's going through the printer now; I'll let you know how it goes!
 

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Looks great! I still think the top of that top B would be the perfect spot for a keychain hole like this
 

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I played with some keychain holes, but left them off because I think that actual keychains would be a good fundraiser for the group.

It definitely needs to be a thicker part of the card so the keychain doesn't rip through. That B might work, but I think that they'd have to go next to the QR code to really hold up.

I'm down for either option. What do you guys think? Hole or nah? In the top or the bottom?
 
business_card_final_final_v2.1_final-for-real.jpg

PXL_20220728_072503998.jpgPretty sure this is the version I'm actually going to post. Putting the icon over a negative space instead of having it be the negative space is much better, methinks. Just had to show it off IRL before going to bed 🙃
 
Looks great! Is the HM pretty secured to the rest? My thought is that it may be too easy to break it out of the hole just being connected on the 4 corners, but if it's flexible enough I don't think it should be an issue
 
Good question!

TL;DR: that is a concern. I don't think it's a big deal, but only real life testing will be sure

Let's get into the weeds!
So the HM is mounted to the sides of the circle by the corners, which come up to the white layer (so 4 layers thick). I tried making the actual HM come up to the top black layer (6 layers thick), and that was strong as hell. It disappears on just about any background, though. I suspect that white would show up better, but not much. The teal shows up really well on almost any background, but the letters are really flexible. It would super be a concern, but they are protected by that circle around them. Really the only thing that is a concern is something that would damage the rest of the card (e.g., being bent in a pocket). For what it's worth, it's the same problem the last design had, but the cutouts are actually stronger since it's not coming to the fine points of the M.

Of course, we're sending these out into the world to be printed on any color combination imaginable, so all of this likely becomes moot in real world situations. Hopefully they always get printed with enough of a contrast that the little pop of color in the QR code makes the thinness worth it 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
That looks so cool! It totally embodies the the movement with it's own production.

I'm curious if you have tried ironing settings before? The text might be difficult with it but it could do wonders for the other base colors.

Another overly complicated idea for experimenting I had was that it would be neat to try and do multiple colors on the same layer height with the single extruder by combining the gcode from two files and inserting a filament swap procedure code in-between them. In theory anyone could be a multi-material printer if they are okay with swapping filaments each layer, usually absurd to ask but not that difficult to do with a fast and most importantly short (vertically) print like this and other sign work.
 
I haven't messed with ironing, but that is an interesting idea! I kind of like the printhead lines on the background, to give the card a rough look, but it's worth playing with.

Also, when you're saying to do multiple colors on the same layer height, are you meaning to make the entire card the same thickness?
 
Yeah basically what single head multi material printers do already but manually filament swapping when its done with a color section rather than when its done with the layer.

The layer change is just a line of gcode after the filament swap so i imagine a cura post processing script could even be made to use the jpg to height map and then remove the z change code rather trying to insert the gcode manually. You would preview as 3d with each color its own layer but a post processing script could flatten it while retaining the filament swaps.
 
Just printed my own card! I went with a dual glow Pentafilament for the base and a metallic green for the top. IMG_20220809_203649497.jpg
Turned out pretty good. Had a lot of cleanup to do from retraction stringing, but that's from my slicer settings. Here's how it looks glowing tooIMG_20220809_203738730.jpg
I really like it. The red at the top is just a reflection from my bl touch, but the glow color mix turned out great
 
Holy crap that filament combo is brilliant! These would be cool to bring to the night events, maybe maybe we could keep them in a little UV led box so they are glowing super bright when we hand them out!
 
That's it under my uv light too
IMG_20220809_210020695.jpg
It's the AMOLEN sparkling glow
( AMOLEN PLA 3D Printer Filament, 1.75mm, Shiny Glow in The Dark Green 1 kg Spool https://a.co/d/eRHrmPU )

Mixed with this color change glow
( AMOLEN 3D Printer Filament Glow in The Dark Multicolor PLA Filament, 3D Printing Filament Color Change in 10 Meters, 1KG https://a.co/d/8CNLWFB )

And this green as the top
( Silk Jade Green PLA 3D Printer Filament 1.75mm 1KG 2.2 LBS Spool 3D Printing Material CC3D Shine Silky Shiny Metallic Metal Gold Silver Copper Bronze PLA Filament https://a.co/d/1s8zFGb )
 
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