Acrylic Glass Art with 3D printing Series: Making a 3D Print Stencil

In this method, the goal is to print the stencil directly on your glass piece. You may wonder, "Why print on the glass and not on the print bed?"

So the stencil needs to be really flat on the surface to make clean lines. If it lifts anywhere, you lose definition. Well...it works well on paper.

Anywhere the stencil "lifts" it's fuzzy.
However on a piece of glass...the fuzzy parts don't look as stylish. 

Hmmm...globby Kyojuro. 

This is why we're printing directly on the piece of glass. The adhesion to the glass keeps it flat so we can paint or use etching cream or use an engraving tool I guess. You could invert the stencil too and make the inverse stencil the lineart of your piece. 

Materials

For this project you will need: 

  • Isopropyl Alcohol
  •  Filament 
  • Optional Materials: .2 Extruder Nozzle
  • Slicer program

Pre-Requisites

Check height of your glass directly with your machine. You want to make sure you got the correct height for your material. If you find that it's a couple points off, you can make note of it to correct it in your slicer program or manually on your machine. 

By default most machines have a .4mm nozzle. If you want more detail, use a smaller nozzle. Just make sure to update your slicer's profile to use the smaller nozzle. 

 This method requires that your slicer program allow you to start the print to match the thickness of your glass. So the printer starts printing directly onto your glass instead of on the bed. You can set this manually on most machines. I just like running programs and letting it do its thing. In Cura you will need to download the Z Offset plugin from the marketplace. 

 I have copies of my profiles here: Cura Profiles

Cura Stuff

If you are using a precut glass piece, you'll need to know where to place it on the printer bed. In this case you will make two files: One for placement and the other for printing. 

1. Import your STL file into the Slicer. If you have not already, resize the model to fit the dimensions of your glass piece. Scale the Z-axis height to a setting that will make about 2 - 4 layers. For example if your layer height is .2mm scale the Z axis to .6 mm to make it 3 layers. 

2. Adjust your settings to suit your usual printing. Although some extra settings to consider are to make sure it prints thin walls if your image is fiddly.  

To make a Placement File: Set the Z-offset to 0 so the filament prints directly on the bed. Use a SKIRT bed adhesion. Let it run for 3 - 5 rounds, and set it about 1 mm away from your print model. 

The blue line is the skirt.

To make the Stencil: Set the z-offset to the thickness of your glass. (Mine is 4mm.)

3. Save the gcodes for your stencil. 

Printer Stuff

1. Install the nozzle size of your choosing and load filament.

2. Print the placement file on the regular bed. You can level your bed with this and figure out where the stencil will print so you can place your glass accordingly. 

 


3. Place your glass blank within the placement lines. Remove any protective film or paper from one side, then secure it down. 


4: Double check your z offset before printing. Then clean your glass with the isopropyl alcohol so there is no human skin oils on it. 

5: Run the gcode for printing the stencil. Keep an eye on that first layer to make sure things are going well. Then let it run. 


6. Wait for the bed to cool and remove the glass from the printer bed. Do NOT take off your stencil. That's the whole point of this thing. If you printed any kind of skirt adhesion you can carefully remove it. 

My example was an "inverse" stencil. This usually works pretty well with the standard nozzles and won't take as much time. However, this will result in the "line art" being clear on your glass and the "background" to be whatever color or texture you put on it. Removing the stencil is a lot trickier though. 

Alternatively, you can just use colored filament of your choice to use as the line art. 

Placement will be very important for this one.

Default stencils are a tinge more accurate when using a smaller nozzle size. 

Associated Projects

  •  Ruka and Kyo Juro
  •  Goro
  •  Deku
  •  Casual Bakugo

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