Unfortunately the bottom of the print warped, and there was deformation in the lower part of the print (print is shown upside-down in the image below).
Not sure exactly what I need to do to keep that from happening, but a cooling fan and better temperature settings either in the extruder or on my heated build plate would certainly help. One task I've yet to complete is finishing the Slic3r calibration tutorial over at RichRap's blog http://richrap.blogspot.com/2012/01/slic3r-is-nicer-part-1-settings-and.html I'm guessing there are a few things in there that will help as well.
Undeterred (or too stupid to know better), I decided to try and print the ball and socket pieces to the helping hands prints I had started a few nights ago. There were definitely some issues during the print, but I thought things were going well.
I realized that out of the 12 pieces I was printing (4 copies on X by 3 copies on Y), 6 had serious issues. The bottom of the ball and sockets print in four separate pieces up until the end of the slots that allow the sockets to flex around the ball they're attached to. On 6 of the pieces, one of the four tabs had fallen down.
Luckily, the print was able to mostly recover, and things were looking good again until the print got to the levels where the balls begin to form. As the balls grew out larger and larger with each layer, I began to see the edges of the balls curl upwards. The printer was handling this OK, but the nozzle kept hitting the pieces when it traveled back to the start of each layer. I didn't realize that this was making the printer miss steps, and the pieces ended up with a pretty bad shift to one side about 1/2 the way up the balls.
I've posted a video of the print below. Even though the parts aren't perfect, it's still a lot of fun just to sit and watch the printer work.
Hopefully tomorrow and Monday I will be able to complete more calibration exercises and improve the quality a little more.
D
No comments:
Post a Comment