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Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:39:08 -0500 last edited: Sun, 21 May 2023 09:25:51 -0400

jason@hub.inktada.com

Cool 212x214x320mm castle. It's about to start printing the main foundation. Estimated print time is 2 days. Love the filament transitions.

3D-Printing

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Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:13:19 -0500

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

looking forward to updates

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 17:51:34 -0500

Freddy WILLEMS

frewi80@hub.inktada.com

Now that is cool ! So is Aulin making a short video around this Castle project, ? She will come up with something...

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 11:40:58 -0500

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

I had an issue about 1cm up from the castle floor. It was caused by too many extractions (where the filament moves backwards to stop dripping over printed parts and/or cobwebs) over too short of a period. Many of the extractions were causing the melted filament to temporarily seize up above the heat chamber, this weakened the structure as flow was spurratic during the seizings. I was working at the time, so I couldn't monitor. I also had confidence it was going to print fine because it had already been printing for close 15 hours prior to the fail.

Eventually, one of the extractions seized up completely. I told it continue printing after I fixed everything (and adjusted the extraction setting to be less severe). Unfortunately, at this point the castle was compromised (to weak and lumpy).

Early today, I cut castle base off and am printing the castle, starting at the base now. I'll glue or melt the two parts together. Luckly I didn't have to restart completely, just lost the 1cm and downtime from not wanting to deal with it last night.

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 17:07:17 -0500

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

It got past the point it failed before, this is good news. The only side-effect is that there will be minor cleanup necessary due to the change in extraction settings, well worth being able to print vs not print.

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 09:12:18 -0500

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

This first image is where I continued print- it's about half-way complete with castle portion. You can notice little nodes of excess filament in some areas. Those typically wipe right off. This is due to me being over-cautious on extraction settings. I want to make sure this prints and experiment/fine-tune later.

Here's where it failed:

The red squares show the signs of failure. On the turret, you can clearly see the weak point where sometimes the filament was seized in the print head. On the infill, rather than looking like a cross-weave pattern, it looks chaotic. On the columns, notice that a few of them have actually been knocked off due to weakness. This is the reason I stopped the print.

The magenta line is where I cut the model with a knife and restarted the print job. I chose this location so that the completed model looks uniform for the castle.

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:29:45 -0500 last edited: Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:40:22 -0500

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

It's looking sharp, even better in person! Roughly twice the amount of height as this picture and it is done.

I'll try to clean up all the filament balls from retraction settings being too lax. If it doesn't clean up well enough I'll reprint at some point in the near future, maybe bigger. I love this castle.

I've printed roughly 300 hours on the new print head and it's amazing when you run into a model (like this one) and find some of your setttings need fine tuning.

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:20:17 -0500

Freddy WILLEMS

frewi80@hub.inktada.com

Looks great already !!

Tue, 23 May 2023 08:14:24 -0400

Cyborg 2-A ✅

wago@libertious.com

Looks great. 2 days on a machine is kinda expensive i think. :)

Tue, 23 May 2023 08:25:38 -0400 last edited: Tue, 23 May 2023 08:57:29 -0400

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

It runs itself. This used about $10 of filament. Electricity, especially for this build, was minimal (simple filament). Since this printer is not 24 hour production printer, most of its time is offline, meaning, it sits in the corner unused.

Issues like what happened midpoint in print are typically on a first large print with a new type or brand of filament.

After this build, I printed another one 4x as big for a friend, it took a week and required no hand-holding or complications. My printer then sat idle until I needed it to construct rocket parts.

When I print a PEKK prototype part, it cost around $50 vs over a $1000 to get an equivalent prototype in metal, but has the same strength as metal and a high melting point.