Surprise Eggs: 3D Printer Tests

These cute little toys serve as 3D printer torture tests:

Obviously, each egg can hold only one of those toys, but I had to run them off in both retina-burn orange PETG and black PETG-CF for comparison.

These Surprise Egg models came from Thingiverse, but they’re also available on Printables. You’ll find many more, of course, at a variety of scales, with these on the small end.

The white eggs print with no difficulty at all, as does most of the equipment contained within:

Most moving parts require careful back-and-forth movement to break them free, but they’re surprisingly functional. The PETG-CF, printed with an Extrusion Multiplier = 0.8, looks better, although the moving parts were more firmly stuck together.

Not all of the equipment came out perfectly:

Even without any special preparation, the MK4 didn’t have much trouble. If you were doing those for real, you could add stickum to the sheet or switch to a sheet with absurdly high PETG griptivity.

My designs look downright chunky by comparison …