3D Printing

[photon]

Printed my first few bigger prints..

First was a different mount for the power supply. That one I did supports on for the first time. I had my first kind of failure, one of the tree support towers fell over during the print but it was only supporting screw holes anyway (I maybe didn't need supports there but wanted to try anyway). Print still came out awesome. That was 8h printing.

Was a bit worried about burning down my house by leaving it running overnight but really it doesn't get hot enough to do that.

Second was an articulated dragon at 12h. Zero drama for the print, came out super clean and man I can see why people get into mulit-filament printers, this would look amazing in multiple colours.

Though I do think I made kind of a mistake, it looks like Orca Slicer by default puts a brim on everything.. all my previous prints were basically square so removing the brim and deburring was simple.

The articulated dragon though is NOT a simple shape.. cleaning this up with an exacto knife is going to be a nightmare.

I guess I can try again but without a brim and hope it adheres? Or maybe set a small gap between the brim and the print, small enough that it still basically contacts but is thinner than the brim itself so is easier to remove.

But a few really long prints with no drama increases my confidence.. with this exact filament and settings anyway lol. Now I see why most people never change the nozzle size even, as soon as you change something you're thrown into the vast unknown.

[photon]

Also there's something super cool about using a tool to make improvements for that tool.

[combustiblefuel]

You can use purple glue sticks to adhere with out brimstone or change the adhesion layer setting. Depending on the material I just give up and use a glue stick

[photon]

Rather than reprinting the whole 12 hour thing I sliced off a chunk of the smallest parts of the tail and printed that just to see if it would stick.. sticks fine so I'll give printing another one a go, my wife actually wants one lol.

But yeah will get a glue stick just in case, but so far the PEI plate has worked great for everything I've done.

[photon]

Looking at setting up OctoPrint so I can put the printer somewhere better than the kitchen table (too loud for it to sit in my office while I'm working). Most annoying thing is the price of Raspberry Pi boards! A $20 Zero 2 W would work fine, but have to double it to add shipping

[photon]

So up to now I've been printing stuff I just downloaded.

I finally grabbed the model I've been working on in Fusion 360 and exported it, loaded it up, scaled it waaay down, and hit print.



I can't believe it even printed the tiny rods holding up the middle, I was sure that would fail. Managed not to break them removing the supports.

It's supposed to be the top of this staff:



To be able to go from image to drawing to print like that with as little skill as I have is pretty incredible that the tools are so accessible. Very cool.