Making “Undeveloped” – a recent 3D printed artist book – required a bunch of experiments and changes. I can usually see some of the problems and some of the ways I can improve the piece in the digital stages, during the CAD design in Tinkercad or in the slicing in Simplify3D. But sometimes when the sculpture becomes a hard physical real thing it is wrong, wrong, wrong, and its time to sort out how to make it right. Sometimes I know there might be problems so I’ll print parts just for testing.

The box for Undeveloped takes about 12 hours to print just the main part. To make sure the box and sliding lid fit together properly I printed a small section of the box and the complete cover. If it wasn’t going to work I didn’t want to waste 12 hours and a bunch of filament to find out. I used Tinkercad to cut a section of the main box.

I used any old color of PLA for the tests…. whatever was already in the printer if I had enough.

Plus, the yellow PLA wasn’t Kodak yellow. Because I buy PLA from the internet you never know what the actual color is until you open the box.


rub-n-buff comes in a variety of metallic finishes.

If you don’t wear gloves you’ll end up with hands like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.
The finished product:

“Undeveloped” is part of my Gutenberg series of 3D printed artist books/