The care & nurture of a 3d printer...

[Westmarcher]

[in reply to fsn's "Then we could print out more copies of Techno, and more, and more ..]
but..I'll give it a go... of course, it would require scanning the original parts. I hear he's started the dissection already... 

C'mon, Phil. There must be a finger or an ear lying about somewhere ... 

[fsn]

I've been reading some more articles about the technology and it's fascinating.

Printing off micro-satellites in space ...
https://www.sculpteo.com/blog/2017/11/29/3d-printing-in-space-the-new-revolution/

Printing houses ...
https://all3dp.com/2/3d-printed-house-cost/

Printing prosthetic limbs* ...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/19/3d-printed-prosthetic-limbs-revolution-in-medicine

The ingenuity of Man constantly amazes me.

*In FSN world (where all forum members are attractice young ladies with an aversion to significant amounts of clothing) Techno is Queen Borg. Part woman - part 3d printed.

[Techno]

You OIKS !!

Cheers - Phil

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

They 'avin a dig at you Phil........GOOD

[fsn]

Not at all!

We value Techno as a special resource and wish to preserve his skills and talents far into the future.

[Techno]

Mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter......Sodding OIKS !

[FierceKitty]

Techno gave us the Aztecs. Let us honour him for that.

Of course, now that we've got them....

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Techno gave us the Aztecs. Let us honour him for that.

Of course, now that we've got them....

Unfortunately !!

[Wulf]

THe Aztecs knew a thing or two about hearts...

[Wulf]

Sometimes you don't need Supports at all...

[Techno]

That looks familiar !

It really is rather good.

(Wulf......Dirty your cutting mat......It's disgustingly clean. )

Cheers - Phil

[Wulf]

(Wulf......Dirty your cutting mat......It's disgustingly clean. )

That's the CUTTING mat, commonly used for photoshots and paper projects such as wargame counters, card buildings & various boardgame bits.

Here's the WORKING mat...

[Techno]

MUCH better. 

My own 'working mat' has loads of black bits showing through.....Where I've spilt acetone....and then peeled the green 'skin' off.
I've got a brand new mat in the room.....Which I keep for 'best'. I'll probably pop my clogs before I decide to give that one an airing.

Cheers - Mr Scruffy-Git

[Wulf]

My own 'working mat' has loads of black bits showing through.....Where I've spilt acetone....and then peeled the green 'skin' off.

Mine has fluff growing out of it where I used a rotary cutter to chop up some corduroy to make ploughed fields... It cut then, but embedded some of the fibres into the mat!

[Wulf]

One quick note - so far I've printed stuff with brown PLA, Silver Grey PLA and Translucent PLA. They're all a bit different, the brown stuff is a lot stringier, the translucent stull is harder when cured and a bloody nuisance since I can't see if its printing properly, and the Silver Grey stuff is lovely. Many of the pics I'm showing have minis sprayed with Halford's Grey Primer (especially the translucent stuff...)

OK, so, things have progressed again, thus the further delay. However, the issues I've had were issues with cleanup, so...


Cleanup on build plate 1...
Let's start with the most essential part of cleanup. Actually getting the printed model off the build plate... That may sound simple, but remember how much effort we spent getting it to stick to the build plate... This printer, and, I suspect, others, comes with a palette knife – essentially a little, sharpened, wallpaper scraper. Often, you need it... In fact, often you need quite a it of effort just to prise a corner of the knife under the model, then gently but damn firmly (hold the build plate with the other hand, remember how precisely it's aligned) work it under the model until it pops off. Repeat as necessary when printing 20-odd fences... At this point it's advisable to spend a few minutes cleaning the build plate itself before attending to the model. Scrape off any remaining residue, the skirt if you printed one, etc. Alcohol becomes important now. No, not for you, isopropyl or rubbing alcohol, to rub thoroughly over the base plate & clean it off. I think neglecting this led to a lot of my early issues with adhesion.  Note that my printer, the Ender 3 Pro, comes with a removable flexible magnetic textured mat on the build plate, other printers have glass (very very smooth & highly recommended as an upgrade) or metal build plates, and need additional work to ensure adhesion, such as glue sticks, double-sided tape or hairspray...

Rather than attempt to explain the process of actually removing supports, the best thing I can do is point you at a couple of YouTube videos. The first is especially relevant to us, as it's by Butler's Printed  Models, and he's removing support from a SdKfz 234/2 Puma (although in 15 or 20mm by the looks of it):

I'd say from that video & the minis I've purchased from them before that was 20% support  in a grid pattern.  Might have been  support everywhere, but the Puma is a nice shape for support from the baseplate. The second is a look at removing support from delicate & detailed minis.

There are dozens of others like this on YouTube. Now, from these you can see that these minis are pretty tough, but, if you overdo it, they just snap. So, superglue to the rescue.  So long as the model has printed in it's entirety and not disintegrated during printing, and so long as you can remove the supports without a great deal of mess, some minor breakages are acceptable.

The issues I had recently were to do with Support Interfaces, the roofs I was so keen on earlier. Well, they're off my Christmas list again. I've had immense difficulties separating roofs from prints recently, and in trying to fix this I discovered more about them. For a start, they're damn thick – the default thickness is 1mm, which is pretty damn thick for this scale! I have found you can reduce this, but there's a minimum dependant on layer thickness, however you can also vary the density. I'm investigating a 0.36mm thick 50% roof with 0,08mm layers on some Opel Blitz trucks as we speak...

A quick word on Tree Supports.
Blech...  
Good word for them. I have a constant on again off again relationship with tree supports. Sometimes they work perfectly, and come off far better than normal supports.



Those just slipped off like a pair of gloves...

Other times, they  just won't let go & ruin the mini, or they never supported it in the first place.  Generally, though, they work well without a roof, not so well with, which works OK most of the time. Normal supports work better with a roof if you want to minimise the amount of support material to clean up, but the roof then gives issues in cleanup...

Now, way back in this thread I was asked why turrets had such a lot of support under them. Here's why:



The Ram at the top left still has it's MG turret in place, it is separate, and that's not something nasty stuck to the bottom of the turret, it was printed in brown PLA and sprayd with grey primer. The others were printed in grey PLA. Note the lovely big, solid turret... well, they're not pins, more like pillars. The turrets sit right side up on the build plate, so the support has to go all the way up that pillar to support the bottom of the turret & gun. Any turrets on the tanks I've printed turn, even the teeny little MG turret on the Ram! You'll have see turret cleanup on the Puma video.

Once support cleanup is over, and you breathe a sigh of relief that nothing's irreparably damaged, you can clean up  the stringy bits, odd surface anomalies, etc. Same as you would with a resin model at this point.

On painting, well, by this point these are just plastic minis. Treat them like any other. I always prime them, but I use primer on every mini now, Halfords spray stuff. Remember that the depth of undercuts & detail on these is greater than most metal minis, so they'll take washes really well, but the sharpness of surface detail like hatch hinges, shovels, etc. may be a bit suspect, especially in 10mm scale since most of the minis have had to be upsized or downsized from other scales.

Lastly, a reminder that cleanup is really a matter of support. Often, you won't need much if any support. This was printed with no support at all...



And these Panzer 35(t), although printed with tree supports on the hull & standard supports on the turret, stand in front of what were described in the file I downloaded as 'Czech Hedgehogs' (I thought it fitting...), which printed with no support.  Notre Dame only needed a few threads removed by finger & thumb from the highest points, but the hedgehogs needed a fair few strings removed by tweezers. A damn sight easier than cleaning out support structure from between the girders though!



OK, from now on I'll intermittently post random thoughts & (hopefully pretty) pictures. If anyone wants  any specific topic covered, let me know.