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

Started by Wulf, 10 March 2019, 03:46:12 AM

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Wulf

OOPS... deleted a file on PhotoBucket, wrong one... if anyone has the ability, please delete the erroneous post.

Still printing, no interesting developments until now. I was asked to print a Taj Mahal for a work colleague, so here it is, but for myself I tried some character miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons style. They're meant to be printed about 32mm tall, but I rescaled them down to 25mm...



With tree support from the baseplate, the figures worked out well. I've changed to this yellow eSUN PLA+, which feels a bit... soapy? compared to the SUNLU grey stuff, but does seem to be excellent for print quality & strength.

Wulf

Thread resurrection...

Enough of these high-tech modern devices! Let's get back to basics...

The more astute amongst you may notice the presence of a Sherman tank (that's a metal mini by Pendraken) and a yellow school bus... While I'd imagine most people on this forum would understand the scale, those are there for other forums to demonstrate relative sizes to those less accustomed to tanks. Most people associate 'tanks' with modern Western tanks, which are HUGE in comparison to almost every WWII tank, but WWI tanks were pretty damn big too.


Wulf

16 June 2019, 11:00:04 PM #107 Last Edit: 16 June 2019, 11:49:57 PM by Wulf
I have been meaning to update this thread, actually. A lot has happened, but fundamentally not much changed...

After many issues with the 0.3mm nozzle, I went back to the 0.4mm stock size. I can't really notice the difference 99% of the time... Only when attempting to print really thin lines (like the barrels on those 1:600 scale tanks & struts on the WWII Armoured Bulldozer). The 0.4mm has one huge advantage, it puts down more plastic at a time. When printing big stuff, like boardgame box inserts, it can shorten print time by up to 25% - and that can be HOURS...

I'm now using eSUN PLA+ almost exclusively as my filament brand of choice. As I mentioned early in this thread, quality varies by colour quite remarkably, the 'Pine Green' being quite stringy, the 'Dark Yellow' a bit stringy, but the 'Grey' is superb & my default colour now.

Techno

Those all look pretty damn good to me.  :)

The lilac (?) ones look fine .....Or are those the 'grays' and my eyesight's playing silly b's ?

Cheers - Phil


Wulf

17 June 2019, 06:36:36 PM #109 Last Edit: 17 June 2019, 06:59:07 PM by Wulf
Quote from: Techno on 17 June 2019, 08:20:14 AM
Those all look pretty damn good to me.  :)

The lilac (?) ones look fine .....Or are those the 'grays' and my eyesight's playing silly b's ?
I see what you mean, the picture colour has gone wonky. Those are indeed grey.

paulr

I suspect the yellow of the bus has thrown the white balance out
Lord Lensman of Wellington
2018 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2022 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2023 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

Techno

The colour balance has definitely gone a bit squiffy.  :o

I think Paul's right.....Unless you used a different light source, Wulf ?

Cheers - Phil

Wulf

Quote from: Techno on 18 June 2019, 07:30:54 AM
The colour balance has definitely gone a bit squiffy.  :o

I think Paul's right.....Unless you used a different light source, Wulf ?
No, just daylight & the flash on my cheap camera.

Wulf

It's Necromancy i tell you, Necromancy! Thread resurrection at it's worst! :d

I just wanted to add one last comment for closure.

I have now taken to printing anything with wheels with a Brim for print bed adhesion. It gives the wheels a solid connection so they don't unstick or wobble, so they turn out round...

Tree Support is getting less and less used now, but is still the essential way to print a tank hull complete with tracks. It supports the suspension & upper track & trackguards very nicely. But it's no good at supporting the underside of a turret... for some reason it can create a nice straight edge on a trackguard, but NOT on a turret... As I mentioned above, it's great at curving IN to support, but no good at supporting straight up or curving OUT. So turrets & complex shapes (like people... ) get regular support, often Everywhere, and a lot of cleanup time.

I'm still using the stock 0.4mm nozzle, still using eSUN PLA+, but varying nozzle temperature between 185 and 205 depending on colour... the grey seems to take higher temperatures or else it strings, the Dark Yellow needs lower temperatures or else it gets damn hard to clean off support. Odd.

I have an add-on in Cura called 'Mesh Tools' (nice thing about Cura, the add-ons are available from within the program, no need to search for them) that tells me if a model I load in is 'not watertight' - the problems I had with the ankylosaur. If it does so, I now load that file into MS 3D Builder first - that will detect problems & offer to fix them. I let it do so, save the file, and load it back in to Cura. Voila... never failed yet, although one file did have to run overnight just to make it 'watertight'!

Other than that... everything lovely. Now printing a Boarhound armoured car, formerly only available from Shapeways for £20 a model printed in resin, the designer has been selling his STL files for $10 a pop on Facebook for 48 hours only! Expensive... I bought 7...