Family Projects

I was looking for an excuse to practice printing, and ended up offering to give my family members a print by request.

and... of course... I neglected to get good pictures of the Tiger statue (the purple print) but otherwise these were done for my nephews.

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My brother and sister-in-law were next. My brother asked for some nesting chess pieces, and my sister asked for a sunflower.

The chess pieces were a pain in the butt, and my wife suggested that providing several sunflowers would be appreciated so my sister could use them as seasonal design elements.

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About this point, my cousin saw that i had the printer, and asked for my help with a project he was working on for his niece. We found the dragon embryo, and i gave him a hand full of them so he could iterate if he needed. The final photo is his finished product.

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Lastly, another brother and sister-in-law like skulls.

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Lessons Learned.

  • I live at 4000 ft above sea level. The heat coefficient at this altitude is different than it is most places (this much I was intellectually aware of). Ultimately I ended up needing to crank up the temp (Nozzle: 240C Bed: 60C), for the unitiated... the recommended nozzle temp is 200 - 220C for PLA and as far as I can tell most of the internet suggests running the bed temp at closer to 50C.

Interestingly, this one thing changed my approach to pretty much everything. For instance, I don't need a medium for build plate adhesion, so no hairspray, glue stick, or (a method I hadn't tried) masking tape. For smaller items that still don't like to stick to the build plate, I do the first two layers of a raft.