Megaman X - fail and fix

Megaman X - 150% scaled up

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1036748

503min/21.53m/$1.63

One of my students asked me to print this Megaman X figure.  It was small so I scaled it up so the details could show.  I also put the print quality to Fine so that the curves would come out nicer.

It took me 3 tries to get this right as demonstrated below.

1st try:  raft + supports, standard suppose from Flashrpint.  Failed because supports in both arms fell.

2nd try:  added custom supports to the Flashprint ones.  Left are OK, right arm fail as support broke.

3rd try:  went nuts with custom supports for the right arm.  SUCCESS!!!

The build time is pretty crazy.  Almost 10hrs!  This is easily the biggest print I've done.

Partway through I checked my 3rd print to see this and was relieved I finally got a good configuration to print.

Modified Dragon Skull

Originally from: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1378132

He has the link to his Tinkercad model which I copied to my own account and modified.

https://www.tinkercad.com/things/g3vCLebCM1f

I removed the spike in the middle of the mouth and then played with scale to make it longer.

224min/10.91m/$0.84

The print came out really well.  I oriented it veritcally so that the raft was on the base and the best details at the front of the dragon were faced up and not needing supports.

With all the supports off, it looks pretty good and will definitely be a centrepiece in my D&D games.

Lifting Issues

I'm printing a box for an Arduino project for some students and I decided this would be a good test.  Since the Finder does not have a heated bed, long flat parts will tend to lift off the bed, curving it and screwing it up.  I've had some success in the past with putting down the blue tape with glue, but there are limitations to it.

About 15 minutes in I could see that it was already lifting off the plate.  So this one's dead.

I figured I didn't put enough glue on.  Ok...lots of glue goes on now.

2nd print try...no luck.  Still lifting.

3rd print try, still lifting.

 This time I let it go all the way just to see what would happen and it turns out I have even bigger problems.  Because this was with the 2nd Finder, I didn't know if this was the printer or the model.

 So I printed it with the 1st Finder and I got pretty much the same thing.  This means the model's supports were screwed up and if I wanted to keep trying this I'd have to manually add supports like I did in a previous post.

Since this project was pretty important I just did it on our big industrial uPrint Plus and it came out fine, but also like 10 times the cost and time!  The Finder can't do everything better than my uPrint Plus but certainly more things are better on the Finder.

MechBay - Design and Print Journey

What you see below is a journey from concept to final product.
It took a lot of iterations.  A lot of trial and error, but after about a day, I finally locked down a design for my MechBay.

My iterations and lessons were as follows:

1. Build a quick mock up for proof of concept
2. Build model close to the design I want.  It doesn't fit, but this was expected as the tolerance in a print is going to be slightly bigger than the CAD design.
3. Redesigned and printed another model.  This time had problem with bed adhesion.  Was using just the plain Finder surface.  So almost all parts have a slight curve.
4. Reprinted base on blue painter's tape.  It came out ok but the new side piece does not fit due to tolerances.
5. Isolated the section of the base that is dealing with the fit of the vertical piece.  Created many variations for the hole.  It took a while but I found one that perfectly fits with the tightness I wanted.
6. Redesigned the models to look a bit more symmetrical, but something was wrong again with fit.
7. Did the isolated fit tests using Blue Painter's tape AND glue stick!  Found perfect fit.
8. Updated the final model and printed what you see above using Blue Painter's tape and glue stick.

Mech Bay - 1:200 scale

Mech Bay - 1:200 Scale
95min / 6.69m/ $0.51

My first personal design from Tinkercad!

I've collected a tonne of the Nicimo 1/200 scale mechs to use for large scale Battletech for a while and I thought it would be neat to design a Mech Bay for it.  This is my first Tinkercad design printed on this printer and the first time I've printed it.

Here's my drawing on Tinkercad.  This is a really basic but really easy to use CAD program that is free from Autodesk.  Just make an account, do all the lessons and you're good to go.  It will automatically save your progress so don't be shy in making duplicates of work!

Here's what it looks like in FlashPrint.  Once it has been prepped in g-code you can actually scroll through the layers to see what it would look like.  I like the honeycomb shape it uses to fill the base plate.

Here it is almost an hour into the print.  You can see the honeycomb is coming out quite nice.  I'm using blue tape for the build plate on this one.

And here's the final.  It came out quite well!  No lifting so the tape did a great job this time.

Now adding the figure for fit.  Too tight!  Have to make changes but hey - this is what's great about having your own 3d printer right?  I'll mod this until it fits and then start adding in some finer details.