Speed Experiments

So it's time for me mess with some of the speed settings to see what they'll actually do.

I've been having some trouble with bed adhesion and I was hoping changing the speed would affect it, but also looking at how the quality would change.

Here's a comparison of time with Peridot at 80mm/s (default) and 40mm/s on "Higher" resolution.

You'll note a few things:

• 67 minutes vs 128 minutes
• 2.80m vs 3.20m
• 474 layers vs 609 layers

Comparing the two prints they look the same from a distance but there you could figure out which one was done with the higher detail by taking a closer look at the layering and edges.  Either way, the normal speed one does fine for what we wanted.

So the effect is noticeable but the questions is: is it really worth the time?

Witcher Medalion

Witcher Medalion
149min/7.3m/$0.55
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:982634

There are a bunch of Witcher medalion models on Thingiverse.  You should pick the one that has the best mounting for you.  There are ones that sit on stands or have loops for chains.  This one has a big loop in the back for a small chain.

It worked out really well, the details were sharp and I printed it with supports that were not too hard to remove.  A great print fresh off Thingiverse.

Iron Giant Bolt

Iron Giant Bolt

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1569466

3 parts

Top

258min/21.73m/$1.65

Cap

56min/4.18m/$0.32

Screw

386min/21m/$1.59

Batch of remaining parts

~60min/6.27m/$0.47

Total:  760min/53.18m/$4.02

One of my students really wanted this bolt from the movie Iron Giant.

It looked pretty daunting with all those curves and overhangs but I thought it would be a good test for the new printer.

The model comes in 3 pieces.  Make sure you add your rafts and supports for these!

 After about a day of printing, all the parts were done and come out quite nicely!

It is quite a beautiful piece straight out of Thingiverse.  My student wants to paint it but I think it looks good just the way it is!

Caravan Project

Caravan Project
This is a series of prints to make up a full caravan set for use in D&D.

Hay Wagon
204min/6.77m/$0.51
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:800707

Draft Horse
59min/2.96min/$0.22
https://www.shapeways.com/product/5BY3QR7MG/draft-horse?optionId=59691060&li=user-profile

Barrels
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32016

Treasure Chest
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:74041

Crates
25min/1.58m/$0.12
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:45107

The Hay Wagon by Kevinrau is amazing.  Lots of detail and a great size for D&D miniatures.
Because this model has many overhangs, you're going to have to add supports.

In Flashprint if you add supports, there will be A LOT of them!  Just look at the green stuff!

If you were to print this with a raft, it would take 4 hours and 36 minutes!

So here's where you can play with the print in Flashprint to position the model manually so that you have minimum rafts.

Rotate the model 90 degrees so that most of the detail is vertical and the overhangs are minimal.  In the original model the body of the cart is a huge overhang.  So we make it vertical so that there is less of a surface area facing down.

After rotating it as close as you can (I can only get like 89.98 for some reason) you can go to Edit -> Auto Layout All and it will re-centre the cart on the build plane.

 Now adding supports you can see significantly less supports:

The time even with a raft is now reduced to 3 hours and 32 minutes. Yes. it's a long time for a cart, but we saved an hour and material by just making a rotation!

When printed, the cart worked out well.  There was a suspicious inconsistency in one of the arms of the cart which made it kind of weak and easily snapped off.

I thought maybe this was caused by my extruder pulling on the filament since I'm not using the built in holder for the Flashforge Finder and an external one that has to be pulled by the machine.  So I printed 2 more and found similar issues but in different locations.

Time for some custom modifications!
I go to Tinkercad.com where you can import and modify models.
Maybe I'll go into detail how I did it but basically I widened the cart to make sure it fit the crate model by importing the crate and important a 2nd cart.  I split the two carts in half and merged them back together.  Then I added a hexagon shaped pole to the front to make it stronger and printed it.

The big cart printed well!

And here it is loaded up:


Draft Horse:

 Chests and Barrels Batch:

 Chests and Barrels Big Batch:

 Crates Batch:

 It's party time!  The Warrior Bear tells his caravan to go forward, guarded by bears, wolves, and a minotaur!

Bear Warrior - 28mm - Custom Supports

Bear Warrior of the Ironwood - scaled to 166.66% (28mm)
161min/10.44m/$0.79
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1077487

I realized I printed the last Bear Warrior too small for D&D.  I needed to scale it 166.66% for it to be 28mm.  Dutchmogul actually mentions this on a couple of his files.

So I scaled it up using FlashPrint's scale function and when I printed it, halfway through I got this mess below.

The support for the arm didn't hold.  It actually fell over.  I felt his could have been several things, but since my 18mm one didn't do this, I thought I'd try it again.

Looking at the mess, it's clear that when scaled up the support isn't holding from the weight.  It's ok at 18mm but when you get bigger, there's more material to hold and some things don't scale up well.

FlashPrint's support function is pretty good.  You can select two types of supports (but can't mix them).  Treelike will allow you to make angles and branches.  Linear just goes straight up.  I have only done treelike because I felt linear uses too much support material.  You can select either one from Supports Options.

You can start by clicking on the big A for Auto Supports.  Most of the time this works totally fine but since my right arm support wasn't working, I decided to add a bunch.

Here's what the autosupports look like.  You can see the big angle at the left in green that keeps falling off on my model.

 Adding supports is easy. Just click Add and then click the spot on the base you want to start and hold down the mouse button to extend it.  The support will be RED if it is not valid or GREEN if it works.

I went nuts and took no chances.  The last support is red just to show how you can extend it.

 With my new supports in, I now created the g code and the approximate time is 2 hours and 41 minutes which is longer because of the crazy supports I added.  This time to also not take chances, I added a raft.  I rarely add rafts because they sometimes stick too well to the base of things.

Result:  SUCCESS!
The axe hand came out really well and my supports worked great!

Minor Error:  I missed the support at the back of the model.  But despite this the model came out fine.

Everything chipped off fine.  Even the raft came off the base quite easily!

And here's the final process with my two mistakes and the good one!  So far 3D printing has been a very enjoyable learning process, but one where learning from your mistakes is highly rewarded!

T-Rex Skull

T-Rex Skull

208min/11.34m/$0.86

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:275091

I started the T-Rex skeleton that just got released by Makerbot on Thingiverse.

First I did the skull.  I used FlashPrint to import both the bottom jaw and skull files together so that it was one print.  As you can see, it turned out pretty well!

There are quite a bit of supports, and getting them out of the teeth and inside the skull have to be done with care but it is worth it!

D&D Minotaurs

Asterion, the Minotaur - 3 pack
339min/16.93m/$1.28
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:583949

Another D&D usable mini from Dutchmogul, but this time I thought it'd be cool to have 3.
I usually run this kind of stuff before bed and have something nice to wake up to.

A 5.5hr run is usually longer than quoted, so this was one of my longest prints so far.

The figures came out very well.  Nice and solid, plus I had enlarged them somewhat so they would be tougher and more menacing.  I think these are about 180% increased in size.

I had to use supports and they worked pretty well except you can see the middle guy's support just got messed up a bit.  I don't think it actually mattered and this makes me wonder about how well FlashPrint's support program is.  I think I can start trying to add my own soon just to see if I can fix a few to save some time and filament.

D&D Wolf Pack

D&D Wolf (6-pack)
151min/6.2m/$0.47
https://www.shapeways.com/product/RJCAAAXW7/wolf?optionId=59691068&li=user-profile

Printing from mz4250's amazing set of free prints again.
I decided to do a whole pack and set it to autoshut off at night.
It worked well but as soon as I tried to lift one off the plate, I broke his legs off!

OOPS!  One down right? Nope, I broke a lot more just trying to take off their supports.  The feet of these wolves are VERY thinly attached to the base.  I eventually just accepted that I will either snap all the legs or at least just the first two.  It's ok though, these can be glued back on.  It's a great model, just know that you're going to snap legs!

Bear Warrior

Bear Warrior
49min/2.52m/$0.19
https://pinshape.com/items/13621-3d-printed-bear-warrior-of-the-ironwood-18mm-scale

Dutchmogul did this awesome Bear Warrior that will make a great boss in D&D or even player character.  Printing it was a good test of supports as you can see the axe and arm have to be totall supported.  They snapped off fairly easily but you have to take care around the axe as it is fairly thin!

This sculpt is simply awesome.  Here he is about to take on 6 of the swordsmen!

Gear Cube - Different Colors

Screwless Cube Gears

3 prints

Screwless-Cube-Plate2.stl
120min / 5.08m / $0.38

Screwless-Cube-Plate1.stl
126min/8.62m/$0.65

Screwless-Cube-Plate1.stl (need to do this one twice)
126min/8.62m/$0.65

Total for Gear Cube on Flashforge Finder:
272min / 22.52m / $1.68

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10483

As I gain confidence, I'm now experimenting with different colors.

I'm trying out the Wanhao clear blue and clear red to make a gear cube.

I'll post a pic when it is completely done but both colors look amazing.

Yoda Buddha

Yoda Buddha
271min/23.73m/$1.80
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1092181

A friend of mine requested this a long time ago but it would have costed a lot to do in ABS.
$1.80 is amazing.
For this one I added supports using FlashPrint so it was a good test of overhangs and doing a larger object than figures.  I used the blue tape/glue stick combo for this one, but I also tested another feature in the Finder:

Auto Shut Off When Finished

When your object is printing, in the bottom right there is the wrench/screwdriver symbol for options.  Press that

Now just click on Finish-Shutdown and the Finder will power off when it is done the print!  This was awesome because I can now print before I go to sleep! (Make sure you have adequately working fire alarms because you never know!)

So this morning I woke up and got this out of the print.  The supports came off quite easily and didn't merge like in my previous experiences.

With all the supports off, it's actually an awesome print!  Just be gentle around the ears!

Be gentle around the ears should you!

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.