BSA306, 3D printing, 31 August - 3 September, 2017

Kevin gave me a refresher course on the MakerBot and I'm doing a marathon of 3D printing this weekend.  I got two little Jellybeans out yesterday.  Kevin recommended using 2 shells and a 5% infill to speed things up plus a much smaller scale print.  The results were much faster (only 3 hours each) but the quality was questionable.  Roughly 10cm high each, there were some small holes in the print and the ears were so little they disappeared. I think the printer couldn't handle it.  I can fill the holes in with spackle of some sort and still paint over them.  They were good test pieces. And having wee little toys that I can easily carry around will be cool.

I don't know if the smear on my camera phone lens just won't come off or I'm too close, but photographing these guys is really hard.  It's always so blurry.  Left is "fur" Jellybean, and right is "sitting" Jellybean.  Sitting Jellybean needs a flat tuckus so it sits properly on the ground.

I'm now printing a 21 cm high "fur" Jellybean.

I've increased the size of his head, tail, hands, and feet so his shell is skinnier.  When I put the fur covering on him, he should be in proportion again.  I'm going to cover him with the purple with the green sheen fur I got in Auckland- SOOO excited about using that at last.

2 September
20 HOURS LATER... I have a big ol' Jellybean.  If it was hollow, it would be a very nice piggy bank, I must say.  This one had 3 shells and a 10% infill.  Its hefty, so if I was doing it again, I probably would go back to the 5% infill and 2 shells.  All of the holes are still present, in all the same places.  It is extremely odd.  Chris Popham pointed out that they're all on the same "line" or level of the body.  Is it a sculpting problem in Maya?  Is it a printer problem?  I printed another little version this morning, same issues, and another this afternoon but this one is standing up.  I want to see if the holes are in all the same places.  Printing Jellybean standing up was much better:  While there were still holes, they were smaller and the ears were perfect.  The rafting fills the space between body and hands and does that come out easily.  Without a dremel tool, that could be a problem for finishing. I looked over the model and I can't see where the problem might be.  Nothing in those places looks weird, like an inverted face, there are no 5 or 3-sided polygons, and I've run a cleanup on the mesh.  The line of holes on the printed laying down Jellybean is roughly where the printer starts creating a completely filled in level.  If the printer creates a level like that on the printed standing up model. it would be at roughly waist height but I can't tell for sure and there  aren't extra holes.

3 September
I brought all of my  prints home for fix up and dress up.  I bought white plumbers caulk which I hope will be dense enough to fill in the holes, attach to the plastic and still be paintable.  That last one might be too ambitious, though.  I sanded up big Jellybean, little printed standing up and little printed laying down.  When the caulk has set up, I will try to create a new tip to the tail and ears on the big Jellybean with hot glue.  If I smooth over it with a wet finger, I may be able to create a smooth transition from plastic to glue.  It takes 1 hour to set up and 24 to cure.  I went over to course and set up a medium Jellybean to print standing up.  I think that it will take 7-8 hours to print ad should be done by alarms on at 9 tonight.  There may even be time to set another Jellybean to print overnight.  I'm winning in terms of multiples but losing in terms of learning from my mistakes and fixing my problems.

  BIG Jellybean, little laying down print, and little standing up print waiting for the caulk to set up.