They are easy to print and can be shaped after for a realistic look. I used a .2 nozzle and dipped the legs in boiling water to bend them to shape.
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There are a few considerations I do in the design phase to eliminate possible issues and clean up. Supports and rafts can effect surface finish unless you have nailed the settings, so I try to avoid this.
The legs are printed flat on the print bed, this gives strength to the legs and also helps with bed adhesion. Also helping with bed adhesion is the single outline of the spider, issues often occur during layer changes and so eliminating the amount of times the nozzle leaves the print the better.
The leg hairs are a result of the nozzle leaving the print to go somewhere else, leaving behind extra material that stretches thin as the print head moves away. There are settings to stop this from happening like print-head and material retractions, coasting distance settings and Z hopping.
Learning the material science can be done via a lot of trial and error ha, and google. With FDM printing, it's handy to know how thermoplastics work, but also knowing how your 3D printer works can result in more reliable prints.
There is always settings you will need to dial in, but I've found each individual print file can be tweaked to; make it print quicker, get better quality, make things stronger, give things more flex. SO MANY SETTINGS it can get a little overwhelming.
It usually goes, "google search 'why is x happening with my 3d prints'" "Answer: Adjust that setting you've been avoiding or didn't know about" or "you're printing too quickly" (slowing down prints solved most of my issues with quality, going against my need for speed)
Slicers (programs that you print from) usually give you a good description of what each setting does.
Meatloaf looked yum, wanted a finger 👍
Thank you so much for the awesome response! You were able to confirm a few of my guesses how done things were done and also given me a few new things I can read more about.
After seeing the spiders and reading that mask thread, the print head retraction had me interested since I could apply some experience I did have, cake decorating, which thinking about it now, is fairly similar to 3D printing. You've got semi-solid but sticky ingredients, and the icing coming out doesn't just stop and cut off cleanly when you pull back from what you're working on. That's immediately what I thought of with your spider legs and how I thought you used it to your advantage.
I find it so encouraging whenever I see this. It's always easy to see someone's end result and think that was just whipped out perfect on the first try. Most computer projects I do work this way, and I see lots of programming humor jokes that essentially say the same thing. "I'm not a good X, I'm a good Googler!"
Hah, I'm glad you have that a look! The fingers were my favorite part due to the higher ratio of crispy bits!
Thanks again for the great reply!