Down the 3D Rabbithole!

With the arrival, setup & testprint of the 2 owls now completed, it was time to get started with the 3d printing.

So for those of you whom are savvy with the 3d printing environment, you will see these as the newb errors, learnings. I will be speaking from a perspective of this is totally new to me...& at times may seem a bit daunting.

OK off we go...first prints of a Gas pump from a Urban & Industrial Printable Terrain kickstarter I participated in, that provided 150 very useful small terrain bits. Everything from fire hydrants to sewer covers...sweet!

Of course not having read the small print on many of those "small" bits I loaded Cura, created the gcode file, & off it went.

Within about half an hour the first fail (on the left) occured, as I didn't have the heat bed hot enough...the whole bit was sliding around stuck the the extruder as it kept splurting out more plastic. Good thing I was home.

The second (on the right) did complete, but was...well....what is it again? Then I went & learned that these were meant to be printed on what I assume to be a resin type printer....oh bother. Since I have seen that perhaps I can define a 'profile' within the cura software that will make it possible for me to print it again correctly. We shall see.

Having seen that a lot of those small bits were going to be a challenge, I moved to another of the Kickstarters I backed (yes I was grabbing quite a few stl kickstarters by this point). This was for Warlayer, a Sci-fi themed set. He had a sample set on Thingverse which is what I figured would be a good start.

The first piece which if I recall correctly was about 10 hours without changing any of the settings on the software. Of course this is where I learned that when I installed the Cura software I had the wrong printer choice selected. This was showing the item as being too large for the bed. Reading through the manual I noticed the one I should have selected & fixed that issue.

After that run & seeing that the printer is actually quite loud when running beside my computer.. I realized that I will be doing a lot of overnight printing.

Now when I placed the 2nd ruin on the bed, I figured I would try adding a 2nd model (the barrels). Having moved it around I saw there was still room, so added the file again for a third model. This round took about 16 hours, but I did figure out that I can maximize the bed surface if I needed too. Will just need to remember to not get right at the edge as the objects have the base layer used to stick it to the hot print bed added (not sure at this point if its part of the image on the Cura software) 

With the items printed, they are now on my paint table & will likely be my first painted post of 2020. Lord knows I have a LOT of stl files to get printed, some numerous time (Space Hulk) to make the terrain I will need.

So now my 3D printing has just begun...still so much more waiting to be learned, so 2020 looks to be an exciting & busy hobby year!