Lions and Tigers and.... Whale Tails?

So the wife has been asking me to model the Whale Tails for a while since we always drive by them and they are visible from her office. After a lot of modeling and a few failed prints I finally got them to print well!

Now these are definitely very hairy when they print. That's because the printer prints the perimeter on the left one, the perimeter on the right, then back to the left for infill, then back to the right for infill, then back to the left for the next layer. In between each of the move stages a little bit of plastic oozes out of the nozzle and drags across the gap. 

I little post production cleaning and they are good to go! Also I printed some lion heads :) No real reason I guess, but why not?! PS maybe I lied a little... no tigers..

Calibrating again

So I decided recently that although I was happy with my prints, it was time to yet again try to improve them. I picked this object because I was previously having problems with overhangs, the nozzle being to hot, and extruding too much filament.

After printing a bunch of simple test perimeters (1 extrusion width cube walls 20 layers thick) at all different layer thicknesses, I decided to drop my layer height from .32mm to .28mm. I also adjusted my hot end temperature. I was running 250 degrees C but now lowered it to 220 degrees C. In slicing objects I set my retraction to .9mm. Finally, because of the lowered layer thickness there was just too much filament being extruded. I set the extrusion multiplier to .8 and now its just right. 

This is how a hollow cube printed with those settings. Wayyyy better than anything before with skinny features and bridging. With my previous settings the legs would have just melted and the print would have never completed. I used to have huge strings between features too. Now the strings are minimal and easy to clean up.  There are also no massive drag marks in the solid surface from the nozzle. 

Garden Spout

Printing a water spout to fit a 2 liter bottle for the wife and watering the garden 

Works like a charm! Threads on, a little loose but after taping the threads on the bottle its nice and snug

It was a pretty fast print since its mostly perimeters

Gen6 Board Enclosure

Ok so nothing really that new here for many RepRappers, but I made my own gen6 board enclosure. It was a really long print and took a lot of material (relatively to my other prints). I can now enclose my electronics to help protect them. A vent on top was placed for future hook up of a fan. 

In my older posts you will see that the board is mounted on the acrylic on the face of the machine. This limited my z-height to 43mm. I mounted the acrylic on top of the unit and spent hours rerunning the wires and getting them to look neat and out of the way. Now I have a max Z of 82mm (could go a little higher but being safe)

Soppha

Another complex print handled beautifully. Soppha's head is an excellently detailed miniature statue. when holding at a distance the print is truly beautiful. Unfortunately due to the position of my circuit board I am limited to 42mm of print height. I will soon be changing that! Then I can make her even bigger. 

My recommendation to fellow reprappers who try to print her this size, set the purge perimeter in slic3r to 5x around 3 layers thick 0mm from the part. It will make the base of the print for her a little bit bigger and easier to stick to the bed. The first print came off the bed when I got to her neck.