Next, I'm gonna click on create merge document. We're going to click on multiple records. We're gonna make sure that our margins are 1/8 of an inch, and the spacing in between the name tags are


One-sixteenth of an inch. I'm gonna click OK.


And then here you have it.


I'm going to copy and paste our design into a new Adobe Illustrator file as you have it here.

And then make sure that our margins are one eighth of an inch. And here you have it.

Setting the margins and copying to Illustrator

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Name Tags Tutorial

We want the width to be 3 inches and the height to be 1.5.


Then we're gonna create a text box.


That's going to contain.


And first name and last name.


We want the text box to be the same with.


As our box.

Creating a text box

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Here, I have a list of names. Notice how they're divided into first and last names, two columns. We have our first row being the header, the name of the variable we're going to be using in the data merge feature.


Next, we wanna save this file.


We're gonna click download.


And save it as a comma separated value sheet. Now, this is really important because the data merge feature requires it.

Using the data merge feature

Then what we want to do is we're gonna click on window.


Go down to utilities and click data merge. Now, we're gonna click on this icon right here. We're gonna select our data source, and we're gonna click on the name tag sheet that we downloaded.


Now that we have clicked on our data source, we're gonna highlight.


Then the first name, which is going to be first. Remember how our first row was named first? This will be the name of the variable, and now we're gonna highlight last name and click on last.


And as you can see, the names are here.

Selecting the data source

Autodesk Fusion 360 LIVE - Idea to 3D Print in Under 30 Minutes

Click on file, print, click on setup.


Preferences, adjust your laser cutter settings for the material you are working with.

Adjusting your laser cutter settings

Next, we're gonna create merge document.


We're gonna select multiple records. We're gonna click on multiple record layouts. We're gonna create our margins to be zero.


Now I'm gonna click OK.


And here you have it.


Multiple name tags.

Merging the data

Now, I'm going to export this into our Adobe InDesign, as I've already have here. We're going to save our spreadsheets.


As a common separate values file.


And then I'm going to go to InDesign again, Windows. We're going to click on utilities and data merge. Now, I'm going to click on our data source.


Then I'm going to designate our Data To a variable.

Designating the data to a variable in InDesign

And then we have a whole bunch of options here on the right for different ways that I can actually print this. The only thing I'm going to adjust for now based on time is instead of using my dissolvable or like a water soluble support material, I'm actually using SR 30 normally, we're gonna go and use the breakaway model material as our support, and this really doesn't, in my opinion, need a lot of support, so it should be fine. And


Base layer, we're actually not gonna use any raft, so this is gonna print faster, and this is small enough that I don't think we're gonna need raft. I don't think we're gonna have any kind of like warping. So I think this is pretty good. We're just gonna go and hit that print button.


And it's gonna send that over to the printer

Choosing the right option for printing

Give that just a moment. It's actually gonna go and start the print, make sure that everything is as it should be. It's getting everything ready. You can actually already hear in the background, my bed is actually raising, and it's gonna go and start that print.


Now my expectation for this print based on the size is that it's gonna be about 5 or 6 minutes

How long will it take to print

Our print is done.


We'll go and grab the bed.


I mean this guy right here, of course. This is my part.


We'll give it a little flex, pull that part right off.

A little string

I'll pull off, not a big deal. The part's looking pretty good. Let's go and grab our zip tie.


Make sure this actually fits.


There we go, a nice tight fit, and we'll give this a nice pull.


Well, a little tighter than
I was expecting.


There we go.

Testing the printed object - Head

you can design something until you're blue in the face.


But it's really only once you hold it in your hands that you know if it's going to work or if it's not gonna work, and you're gonna know what you need to adjust to get it to work. So I've seen a lot of people that they design something and then they wonder, should I 3D print it or should I wait? And then they end up waiting.


They keep designing, they keep waiting, they keep designing, and then they finally print out whatever that part is, only to find that it doesn't work for a whole bunch of reasons. And if they would have only printed it earlier, they would have known that much earlier as well, right? And they would have saved a lot of time in the long run.


So to me, I have this policy, which is, if I ever have this uh tickle in my throat, so to speak, uh should I print it? The answer is absolutely yes, and you should print it now. Once you have that in your hands, that's when you're gonna know whatever it is that you got wrong, maybe it's the spacing, maybe it's the height, maybe it's any number of different things, you'll go and be able to adjust that and then actually redesign it or adjust your design, and then reprint it.


That iterative process, I think is really important to design and engineering, and not everyone embraces it. So again, I have that rule that I try my best to embrace that and actually print right away.

Should you print or make perfect?

Let's talk a little bit about those settings that I went through really fast.


And I'll tell you a little bit
about this printer and my experience with it so far. All right, so first, the printer itself.


I mentioned it's a MakerBot Method X carbon. I'm very fortunate that MakerBot actually provided that to me, which is a wonderful treat. But I love using it because it's so easy to use.


I've had a lot of different printers over my years and also access to many industrial 3D printers that are fantastic. But having
a printer in your home or in your garage is wonderful in terms of how fast you can go from that idea to an actual thing you can hold.


And when it comes to those printers that you can typically afford to have in your house or garage, some of the challenges become art warpage or can you print all the materials you want to print, and how much do you have to fuss with the settings to get it to actually do what you want it to do. And what I love about the MakerBot printer is that it's just really easy. So, let me show you what I'm talking about. I'm gonna share my screen again.

Benefits of the MakerBot

And based on doing this, I'm already seeing that I'm gonna have potentially a slight problem.


Right? The space here is big enough for the zip tie, but not when the zip tie is actually centered, like where it would really be centered. So based on this, now I know I could go back and edit my sketch and actually update this. So maybe I had over here that I was using gap, but really maybe I want to override this and make this like 0.5 of a millimeter of a gap, and now my part's gonna go and update. It's really that simple.

Centering the zip tie

While it's doing that, let's verify that everything is preheated.

It looks like it is.

So let's start our print.

Check for preheating

And we're gonna go and pretend like we're starting a new print. Now this shouldn't mess with what's already happening in the background, so that'll continue, and we'll go


and pretend like we're doing


this the first time. We'll go and add that same file again.


Right, so the interface is really simple. First of all, it knows what it's actually doing cause it's Wi Fi connected. That's cool. It knows the materials that are in here, and I have uh two different heads on this printer, of course. One of them has nylon 12 with carbon fiber, and the other is SR30, which is a support material. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes.


But those are the two materials, and the point here is that the slicer actually knows what's actually in the machine, so that's pretty cool.


And then in terms of like what you're doing in the slicer, it just makes it really simple. So you bring in the part or parts, you can have as many parts as you want, of course, and your options are really simple. Move, rotate, and scale.


Right at the point right now I don't really know how to move it because the important thing is I need to rotate. This is what we did before. I can type in X, Y, and Z angles, that's fine, based on these blue, green, and red arrows you see on the screen, or I could just say place on build plate based on the actual model, and that's typically what I do.


So I rotated my part and that's done, pretty happy with that. I could scale the part, but realistically, I don't do that because I'm always printing the size that I want, you know, like, which is what I designed. So I'm printing it 100%. But if I really wanted to, I could scale here, of course. And then lastly, I can move things. And moving is gonna be about arranging your parts, of course, but you'll see.


There's this square thing in the corner. So if I'm printing with the support material, the printer head is going to be switching between support and the build material, and it's gonna have a little bit of like extra material that comes off every time it switches. So the square is actually a way that MakerBot is able to like clean the head, so to speak, so that it's printing clean material on your part itself. That's what you're going to care about.


So this square could be in the corner, but that means that every time you go to clean the head, it's going to the corner, doing a loop. It's like a bow tie shape actually, and then it goes back to the center to actually make my part. But if you hit this arranged build plate, it'll rearrange things to optimize it. That that's a really cool thing. It just does it easily.

Printer Settings 1

So what we're going to do is we're going to go and add a couple of filets here because we want this to look good. Go and add a couple of filets here as well, and let's send this to our 3D printer and actually try this out, right? So we're gonna go and take this, and normally what I do is I go to tools, make a 3D print, and I send this to a slicer.


But this MakerBot, which is a phenomenal machine, is using a cloud slicer. We don't have a connection to it yet, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to just not send this to a 3D print utility. I'll just save this on my computer. We'll go with this file right there and I'll replace that.


And I just created that STL file on my computer, just locally. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna jump over to my web browser. I'm using Google Chrome and I'm on cloudprint.Makerott.com, which is that cloud slicer for the MakerBot MethodX carbon, and I'm gonna choose to start a new print, and we're gonna add that STL file to this. Go and grab that from my desktop.


And load in here. Now it happens to load in rotate it. So let's go and use that rotate tool. We're gonna go and grab the bottom of this and make that the bottom. Perfect. And then we'll go and arrange my build plate automatically.

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Section 2

Section 3