Printable Flexible Cutting Board

A simple thin cutting board design which can be 3D printed. Can save you money over buying a comparable product in stores. Such boards tend to only last less than a year or so with heavy use anyway, so you might as well print a couple for your kitchen plus replacements as needed.

 

Instructions and Troubleshooting 

Read This and Follow The Steps Before Commenting!

• Calibrate your e-steps, I extrude 200mm or more to minimize measurement error. 
• Level your bed, this object will need a perfectly level bed to get a good surface.
• Calibrate your Z-Offset, for the same reason as above.
• Use a clean, smooth print bed. Free of defects, debris or any non-food-safe residue or adhesion promoter. A sheet of garolite perhaps, or the reverse side of a a glass/ultrabase build plate. The surface you use will shape the top of your cutting board; A smooth surface will give you a smooth board, a textured PEI surface will give you an inverse of that texture as a top surface. Use this to your advantage.
• Use a food-safe filament and nozzle. It's debatable just how much contamination can come from a brass nozzle, but use an FDA food contact approved filament at the very least. Filaments.ca for example has a selection of these, notably the EconoFil and EcoTough lines are made from food contact approved PLA resin at the time of writing. A softer and more flexible PLA may be desirable.
• Use a wide first layer extrusion width of 125-150%. These thicker lines often give a better fill to the bottom layers, with less gaps where lines meet. 
• If needed, increase flow slightly to get a better first layer surface or reduce gaps.
• Print the first layer fairly slowly for the best surface. 20mm/s or so.
• If you want a bottom surface to your cutting board, set the infill type to grid with an infill density of around 30%, bottom layers to 2-3, and top layers to 0. The first layers should print solid with the last 1-2 layers printing with a dense infill grid and no top. Many off the shelf thin cutting boards feature a similar pattern marketed as an ‘anti skid texture'. PLA isn’t as rubberized however, results may vary. I found it made little difference.
• You can rescale the object on the X and Y in your slicer if you want a different size board.
• Do not clean in the dishwasher for hopefully obvious reasons.