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Hi there people, I learned about this whole 3d printing thing about yesterday and i thought i could get some advice from the community! My friends and I wanted to build a project and its basically a regenerative candle! Heres a link as to what our idea would be based off of but obviously not exactly the same. http://hooplaha.com/2014/02/regenerative-candle-melts-away-into-a-brand-new-one-never-dies/

So to start off, is the material that 3d printers print, resistant to hot wax? If so, how much would it cost to make a model that would be around 5cm x 5cm x 25cm roughly? Do i find the nearest 3d hub and could they produce about 30 of them? Do the hubs around me make anything i want? what program do i use to design my product.
If anybody could help me out then that would be absolutely amazing,

Thanks!

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Hi Paul, I can’t find too much information on what temperature dripping wax actually is, but if they’re close to their melting points (about 65C for beeswax) then several types of 3D printed materials can easily withstand that temperature. The most common, ABS, only starts to even soften at 110C, so it shouldn’t have any problem with melting wax. Material costs to print such a thing shouldn’t be ridiculously high. However, actual cost for you may be higher because of the hub fee, and especially the fact that not every hub has a printer that can print a 25cm tall object. (most consumer printers are limited to 20cm.) If you can find a suitable hub, I don’t see why 30 units would be much of an issue, but it may take more time than most orders would. Just an FYI, however, that design for a regenerating candle doesn’t actually work like you’d expect. Much of the wax is burned off as fuel for the candle, so even if you collected the excess that drips off it would likely only be around 1/3 of the mass of your original candle. Hope I helped, -Karl

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Just go with polycarbonate or plexiglass pipes that you cut to custom length, that’d be the cheapest, easiest and highest quality way.

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Hey Paul,

I have to agree with Marius on this, using off-the-shelf stock that you form yourself will probably be a lot faster and cheaper for something simple like this (at least it seems like a simple geometry from the site you posted).

This is something I see happening a lot recently, where even simple tubular or rectangular geometries are being commissioned, that could have been made more effectively with traditional (hand) tools. I see 3D-printing as an option that is only justified if no other manufacturing technique can be used for that geometry. Koenigsegg’s metal printed turbochargers are a good example for this.

This is nothing against your project or even you asking here. This is what talk is for, to get answers to questions.

For modeling there are a large number of free options available to you, like FreeCAD, 123Design, Blender or Sketchup. I don’t know much about non-free, mid-end software.

Hope this helps,

Jonas