Heart gears

Heart Gears (Screwless)

"Got a whole lotta love!" - SC2 Marauder

  I've always wanted to build heart gears. I think it is just way too cool. Thanks to emmett from thingiverse (link to CAD source), I only needed to customize the print setup before printing to have the parts in my hands.

Goal of this build was to:

• kill time (might have been a better idea to study more system dynamics exams :p)
• prove that I have a heart

Parts I used for this build:

Filament	PLA plastic (black)
Paint	Enamel spray paint+primer (red)
Coat	Enamel clear coat spray

First few layers

  3D printing was done in Invention Studio at Georgia Tech using Ultimaker 2.

Finished print

  The parts are printed with 1.2 mm wall thickness (a bit of an overkill) but that was to compensate for the dreadful amount of sanding required to minimize unevenness of the surface due to print layers. 

Parts polished with dremel and sand papers

It was dark outside so it's not my fault that the parts look like freshly extracted organs

  Parts are spray painted with color in multiple repeated process of slightly spraying overall and then drying. This is to evenly distribute paints and prevent them from concentrating in one place. After the color is set, clear coat was sprayed in similar process to protect the painted surface.

This thing rotates pretty well

  The 3D printed pins that connects the gears to the center piece were widened at the middle with pliers so that the gears are less likely to get disassembled from parts rotating. After that, the gears were assembled and rotated for personal gratification.

Improvements for future iterations would be:

• apply on the surface with putty or anything that can fill up the uneven texture
• maybe use a red filament in the first place
• use SLA print for finer resolution instead of FDM print