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Functional Design for 3D Printing: Designing 3d printed things for everyday use - 3rd edition Paperback – June 26, 2017
Enhance your purchase
- Print length236 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJune 26, 2017
- Dimensions6 x 0.54 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100692883215
- ISBN-13978-0692883211
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Product details
- Publisher : Clifford Smyth (June 26, 2017)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 236 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0692883215
- ISBN-13 : 978-0692883211
- Item Weight : 11.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.54 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #119,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in 3D Printing Books
- #114 in Industrial & Product Design
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

An early adopter of additive manufacturing and an innovator in the 3D printing space, Clifford Smyth was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1968. He attended local schools and the University of Alaska - Fairbanks.
Starting out with an early interest in technology, his first exposure to computing was using his mothers account on the University of Alaska mainframe. Learning some rudimentary Fortran, he "appropriated" system time from other users by gaining unauthorized access to the system database in order to satisfy his hunger for computing resources. Reflecting on this, he has mentioned that "at the time, it might not have been a felony", and that anyway, he was “9 at the time, and didn't get caught.”
He refined his coding skills on an Ohio Scientific C28P he purchased with the help of his older brother in 1979. Writing mostly video games and simple bytecode interpreters, he went on to write and market a simple database application for the Timex-Sinclair 1000 home microcomputer under his in-house software publishing company "SmythSoft" in 1982. This was not a commercial success.
Mr Smyth currently divides his time between homes in Alaska and the Caribbean, writing books about subjects that intrigue him and pretending to farm coffee and avocados on a modest plantation on the island of Hispaniola.
An admirer of Neal Stephenson, Dewey Lambdin, George MacDonald Fraser, William Gibson, and Tom Robbins, to name a few, he hopes one day to write books that are not as he puts it, “very, very badly written”.
He is pursuing new collaborative projects in additive manufacturing, pervasive computing, and many other technology related fields, and publishes 3d printable flying gliders on thingiverse.com under the pseudonym exosequitur.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2018
Top reviews from the United States
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Some of the images are so awfully presented that I can't get anything from them. For the most part, the images are lackluster and appear to be lo resolution, poorly formatted (aspect ratio problems), and poorly exposed/graded for black and white printing.
It is a shame that this book looks so unprofessionally thrown together and that the graphics are so bad. The information is extremely good and worthwhile to have as a reference. Author should respect that his audience are a bunch of technical heads and could read a book/books on photography and publishing for visualization. Taking the time to make sure that the images are the right dpi (300 minimum) and that they can be understood easily is critical, especially for a technical primer.

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2018
Some of the images are so awfully presented that I can't get anything from them. For the most part, the images are lackluster and appear to be lo resolution, poorly formatted (aspect ratio problems), and poorly exposed/graded for black and white printing.
It is a shame that this book looks so unprofessionally thrown together and that the graphics are so bad. The information is extremely good and worthwhile to have as a reference. Author should respect that his audience are a bunch of technical heads and could read a book/books on photography and publishing for visualization. Taking the time to make sure that the images are the right dpi (300 minimum) and that they can be understood easily is critical, especially for a technical primer.

This book hits the middle ground just right. It focuses on pragmatic advice for designing useful parts that are strong enough to work in real-world applications. Topics such as infill, part orientation, overhangs and support, and other design considerations specific to FFM (fused filament manufacturing) are covered in great detail. While it's technical stuff, Smyth backs up his explanations with examples and diagrams rather than equations--this book is very much focused on pragmatism over theory.
Some other reviewers fuss about the book being short. That's a plus in my opinion; I don't want to read a 400 page book when a 200 page book will do. This book is compact but, as far as useful information content is concerned, it hits way above its weight. If only other writers valued their reader's time so much.
In sum, if you're looking to move past desk toys and use 3D printing for real stuff, this is the book for you.
Top reviews from other countries

Ok, lets talk about the functional design aspect first. As far as I know, all the current 3d printing processes create prints using some kind of layer-by-layer method. The behaviour of the material of the print will vary according to direction. For example, fff prints tend to fail by separation of adjacent layers when subjected to tension in the z-direction and consequently end up being relatively weak under this kind of stress. As a designer you may want to take account of this by re-orientating parts relative to the layering direction. The book also talks about how to get hinges to work and how to arrange the geometry to get parts to snap together. Thats about it for functional design insight.
Most of the material is about how to cope with the practical issues of getting fff 3d printing to work using today's flaky printers and buggy software. For example, he talks about improving bed adhesion by various means and how you might want to connect inner voids to the outside with holes so that today's slicers don't (contrary to design intent) ignore them. This is quite low level stuff and although useful it does not really fit with the term functional deisgn.
Getting in the way of this useful, albeit mistitled material is the author's writing style. He seems to have sacrificed clarity for some other priority. I have the feeling he is trying to conform to some misconceived notion of how a technical author should write. At its least intrusive this takes the form of labelling his illustrations with the tags "(illustration by author)" or "(photo by author)" which seems entirely unnecessary. Then I noticed an "Author's note:" which begs the question as to who else might be leaving notes for the reader. This is odd but unobstructive. Then there are things like this: "The number of solid layers dictates the solid layers at the Z terminus, or top and bottom, of any models or printed features" as a description of a slicer parameter ... hmm, "Z terminus"? He has 'problematic situations' rather than 'problems' and 'X-Y oriented tubes' rather than 'horizontal tubes'. Very occasionally the meaning disappears but mostly this kind of stuff makes the book an unnecessarily tiring read.
So in summary: hints for using fused filament 3d printers and software with a smidgeon of functional design nous written in a reader-tiring style.

Instead, this book explains design considerations and associated options when creating models that will be 3D printed using FFF/FFM machines i.e. the "domestic" 3D printers.
If you're serious about implementing designs that work whilst minimising structural failures, i.e. creations that don't instantly break, this is a "must read" book.
A very clearly written, clearly typset book with plenty of useful diagrams, you do NOT need to be a mechanical engineer to follow this. Indeed, this is for all of us who don't have that structural engineering background.
There's far more to succesful 3D design and printing than infill % and layer height!
I struggled over 4 stars vs 5. Whilst being very useful I kept wishing for more. But I decided that perhaps that's just me. This book is filled with practical content and I will benefit from rereading it. There is nothing similar available. 5 stars it is :-)



Things like tolerances, materials and some engineering principles.
However, the book states it is not for beginners, but doesn't give enough information for the intermediate user. Also, too much focus on planes and drone parts and not enough discussion about the failure of the tarp hook.