#3dlabcafe

[3dlabcafe]

Migrating to FB

Hi, 

My life is getting busier now and I hardly have time to write long posts as well as keeping updates across the platforms anymore. Therefore I’m moving this blog to Facebook. 

Thank you everyone for viewing my posts and for the kind notes. It’s always great to know that there are many people are sharing the same love or someone across the globe finds my post is useful or interesting ^_^ 

If anyone is still interested in checking out my journey with 3DP, please drop by my page “3D Lab Cafe”. It’s a community page, and I’m based in Melbourne, Australia. Hope to see you there! ^^

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Subdivision bracelet

This is a beautiful bracelet. Designed by nervoussystem [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7048]

 While supports is often required for undercuts and hangovers, they are a disaster for an organic and intricate design if we don’t have the soluble filament for them. 

The first bracelet was printed without supports and rafts. (Note that in this case, raft is not necessary as the contact area with printbed is relatively small.)  However, an organic design means A LOT of hangovers and there were time that the nozzle would just fuse your filament into empty air and create a crumbled lump of spaghetti.

The second bracelet was printed with full raft and supports. Yes, the printout looked ‘supported’. Yet I was undermined the difficulty of removing all the little rafts intertwining with the ‘veins’ of this bangle. I gave up after spending about an hour and a half to pick them out bit by bit, breaking a couple of smaller veins, and still leaving about 30% of the supports that lie in between the two walls.

Haven said all these, I still insist that the bracelet is really nice. It would be perfect if I would have used a soluble filament for supports (eg. HIPS or Nylon). Will do next time, definitely :)

[3dlabcafe]

Printbed after 1 month and 35 prints and fail-to-print haha Time to change the bed sheet :) P/S: Guys. Never put glue stick on printbed!!! Heard somewhere - tried - 'omg!' :P

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Florescent Stratum vase

I fell in love at the first sight with this one of the popular vases on Thingiverse (^^) perhaps because of its modern architectural design, thanks to Mr. Hiroaki. You can find it at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:104120

Scaled to 90%. Single shell at 0.2mm, no raft / support, feed speed 80, travel speed 120. Took about 4hr 20' and came out beautifully, no cleaning or touch up required ^_^

I purposely didn't turn on raft to achieve the shiny, smooth bottom (as you can see in close up). However, the down side: to hard to remove; plus  risk of breaking off some of the 'fans' or pulling off a chunk of kapton tape :)

By the way, I got this new filament from ebay last week. Had a few prints… And...Colour is great, but it seems to jam up my nozzle from time to time so I'm a bit scared.  

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Gandalf is too drunk to get off the chimney so we sent a rescue :P

TGIF. Keep your energy up, folks. Annyoung~~~

[3dlabcafe]

Studying, while waiting for my printer ^_^ Bonus, can you tell what I was learning? ;)

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Yoda with support (part 2)

Hi~ ^.^

It's been so long since the last post; even the  masters (while happily hanging out on my desk) start to complain now :P

In this note, I compare three prints of master Yoda, each in different resolution and corresponding speed. There is no need to lengthy description as the photos say it all. 

As a tiny note, the ears of 0.35mm Yoda were so fragile that I accidental broke one of them while removing the supports. So, guys, please be very careful when printing on low profile or you will scream in tears like me =^_^=

I also learned that we should remove the raft and support within a day after the print completed. Otherwise the plastic will harden and become quite annoying to remove. 

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Part 1: http://3dlabcafe.tumblr.com/post/95000594727/printing-master-yoda-with-chin-support-part-1

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Master Yoda with chin support (part 1) Hi guys. Did you have a great weekend? Well, I did, as you can see, with Master Yoda haha The model is provided by NickRBrewer [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:48060], as a remixed of chylid's model. Applause to them :) This one run on standard profile, 10% fill, 1 shell, 0.2mm layers, standard speed 60-80 mm/s. No raft and color-matched support. Took 2.5 hrs.

What happened was: my right nozzle is slightly lower than my left nozzle as machine faulty (and I was printing by left one), it kept hitting on the layers on the right side. So about 30% of printing process, the support of left ear got knocked off, leaving that ear printed without support. (Besides, all the support layers stuck on like Yoda's facial hair, looked pretty funny indeed.) As a result, the two ears were very different in consistency (as you see in the close ups, right ear on the left and left ear on the right). 

Moving on to the front support. Personally I didn't think they were all necessary since the chin support (from the model) and the 'raft' support (generated by Makerware) were sort of overlapping. In addition, they left some marks on the chin and quite messy where the support broke off. I've seen someone else said that he could print with no support and it was fine, on a different printer though. You may try that too.  

Overall, I think it was an ok print. Good to see Master Yoda in tangible form :) I'll bring you more story on Master Yoda next time. For now, need to get ready for a new week. Good night ^_^ ------ PS: this is irrelevant  to this blog, but camellias and magnolias are in full (amazing) bloom in Melbourne now. Enjoy August if you're in town :)

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Winter is coming!

It is indescribable feeling, printing your own toy ^_^

With 200% confidence, I’d say this is the best print I’ve got so far. Standard resolution. 10% fill, 0.2mm layers, 1 shell. For the speed, I tuned extremely slow this time because this model is relatively intricate and I saw my printer was struggle with Totoro’s details even at 40/55. So only 30/50 mm/s for feed/travel this time. Took 5hours.

While printing the base, the 2nd nozzle scratched and some threads were out of place. They certainly gave me some heart attacks and I paused 3 times to give them some time to cool-calm down. Then the whole castle stuffs were all cool.

Final print out is so clean and neat. It still couldn’t render the details on windows. But that’s too tiny to matter.

Wanna print yours? File from Thingiverse by damm301 [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:39680]  Remember to keep slow speed. Be patient and winter will come :) have fun ^_^