Wooden Shelf

I designed this small woodgrain shelf to display my crawfish and my butterfly. Although the entire shelf prints in just one piece, it simulates the look of a shelf made of 16 individual pieces of wood arranged in a decorative pattern, supported by an integrated bracket made of another 3 pieces. If the pieces are finished in an alternating pattern, then you get a nice pinwheel or checkerboard pattern. But in retrospect, designing some of the pieces as separately printed inlays would've made that easier to do.

Print Settings

• Supports:  No
• Resolution: 0.15 mm
• Infill: 5%
• Filament: Wood PLA brown
• Perimeters: 1
• Horizontal shells: 2 top, 2 bottom
• Top & bottom infill pattern: Octagram Spiral (It complements the pinwheel arrangement of the woodgrain patterns)
• Internal infill pattern: Gyroid (Its waves look natural enough when a bit of light shines through this slightly translucent shelf.)

I used a G-code postprocessor to vary the temperature along the Z axis for additional woodgrain effect. The settings that I used were as follows: temperature range 205 to 233°C, 2-mm grain size. But this postprocessor has two undesirable side effects that I had to work around:

1. It overrides even the first-layer temperature that I specify in PrusaSlicer. With my wood PLA I found that I get the best first-layer adhesion at 215°, so I manually adjusted the temperature on the printer as it prepared to print the first layer. Manually editing the G-code would work also, if you can locate with confidence the part in need of alteration.
2. It prevents the printer from cooling down after the print completed. The first time I tried it, it left the printer hot all night. Knowing this, I manually turned off the heat when this shelf completed printing. Again, manually editing the G-code would work also. If I find myself using this postprocessor much in the future, then I'll look into that.