cloakfiend

Ahh fair enough, but what do you use the PVA water for, glass plate adhesive?

I also hate waste!! but how do you recycle it? by using it as a glue? Id love to be able to recycle left over support PLA. Someone needs to make a decent reliable home extruder. Mind you PVA could be harder to extrude than PLA? Im doing my largest print ever (2 days, not that big by your standards mind you!) but 23 meters of filament and larger than my UM2 can print so have to use the S5, but Im guessing a lot of it is support. Just looking at the amount of it when I pour it into the bin afterwards upsets me.

Some PLA blends tends to shrink with solvent use, as it likes to absorb it. Well acetone anyway. However after initial exposures it tends to suffer less. It depends on how long you are going to submerge it for. Pure PLA is pretty resistant to most things though. Id say take some samples and dip half of in whatever they will be touching and see the effects for yourself. Each brand varies in its make up so you will have to experiment. Rigidinks PLA is quite sturdy and doesn't react to acetone as well as Ultimakers. Their tough PLA does however react to Acetone so that may not be an option? I use a lot of solvents with PLA to smooth its surface after taking it off the build plate. PLA in my chemical baths is surprisingly resilient..... but I guess it all depends on the chemicals.

Yes this is common and essential with some metals as they dont plate to certain things. If i wanted this in gold i would need to plate it in nickel and then finally gold or silver. Platinum is also different. You can also do chrome, which ive not tried yet. Its more tricky i think. Copper is easyish. Flash plating is the process of a quick initial ultrathin base plate. Before other plates. Mine are much thicker. More scratch resistent. It gets a lot more expensive though as you start needing more and more space and baths and the time between pates needs to be almost instantaneous. You start needing a proper setup. And contamination gets expensive if you dont know your chemistry. Im happy with copper. Im gonna focus more on modelling before worrying about what i print them in. I want to try hard gloss next. the purity of the cathodes and anodes is also very important as well as many other things...that could go wrong.

Heres the big pup, my camera lens is stained (the black dots) phone pics. Came out coarse. My new copper source is contaminated i think. Oh well nicer picture to come.

Just noticed I should have removed the dust and fingerprints from the floor but hey ho I forgot! Next time.

And a blue They Live v2 dude, I've now donated to a new home. Ammonia.....still eating away. This is an old one not sure if I already posted pics, but seeing as I don't have it anymore...

Well here's the little dog, I also did the bib pup, but am trying to do timpelapse patina on him, the naked lady is gonna have to wait....but the wait will be worth it! went a bit crazy with the lighting here!!! lolz

Ive seen xtc work well with transparent filament, some dude was making lenses and although small looked pretty good. There is also light cured resin and nail varnish to try. Also a thick layer of superglue might work (it sands clear and can be polished!). Might cloud up though? Maybe superglue remove. I remember that melting plastic. So many things to try....when i have time, lol.

Struggles vary from person to person. But make us stronger and better if we can overcome them!!! But again. Each struggle to their own! I wish luck to all those with struggles.

I have to admit I kinda like the struggle getting there, makes the end result all that more satisfying, even if no one else like the print. If I can make something emotive then my goal has been achieved. I try and learn something in my struggle, but because its usually so bespoke, I get more experience due to my brute force technique or non stop trying. I agree with the theory that an artist produces his/her best work in the midst of a struggle (whatever it may be). It makes the pieces very personal to me. They aren't just random sculpts but more personal struggles that I can draw a close on. Its why I'm so obsessed with details. Not because I want to make them photo accurate but because I want to make them accurate as to what I believe they should look like in my mind. I tried abstract, but just can't help myself adding details to the point of photorealism....I like to test myself. Clothing and fabric textures are my next challenge on 3d prints. I just met a fashion student and she's asking crazy things, which is great. as I love hearing outsiders ideas in processes they have no idea about creating. Printing on cloth looks amazing! I.e. printing one layer then laying a perforated cloth and continuing enables some cool options....

Crimson red...lol looks more more like my light brown colorfabb filament. All your other prints were red, I assume tr colorfabb red and other stuff like gold inside? I forgot. ...you printing all these nicely modelled and posed ladies out... makes me want to print mine, but I might just print the top halves as I'm not happy with the thighs or ankles yet. I keep revisiting them, and sometimes I'm happy sometimes I'm not...I do however love the hair! just gonna plate my daddy puppy today and hopefully by tomorrow Ill have a plastic lady of my own 😉 As for adding support, Id just make an L shape to save on filament and have it link in a tiny place. It will be enough to save it from getting knocked down, I have had to do this a few times myself!

Heres the bottoms, quick burr and acetone then light sand and quick acetone. Not perfect (but not far off!), but very quick by my standards. Usually large areas of support are a real pain to clean up. Ill do a video about this as its real handy. But again only usefull on smooth or simple undersides. Light burring is also amazing for removing layer anomilies. Sanding just takes ages. Means i dont need to bin items anymore with an odd layer here or there.

I used to get this a lot on a work UM2 I abused early on. Try lubing up your rods as well for good luck, worked for me. try to make everything as smooth as you can for the machine. try a few drops of sewing oil on each rod. P.S. Rotating the model means cura slices it differently regardless of its geometry so might help but may not always be a option. I ended up simply adding oil before each print and printing slower (50mm/s) and that seems to work! I didn't even bother tightening any pulleys on the UM2, but then again I don't know what printer you are using, so may be different.

Here's my 'cuter' version of the puppy I did, I finally finished it off yesterday. Im getting the curse of never knowing when to stop sculpting. It difficult when you are sculpting something from one photo with only one angle and you are not that familiar with the subject matter. I guess I stop sculpting when Im' happy, but sometimes I'm never happy and those models just stay as data, eventually ending up abandoned. Or I just keep sculpting and wasting time repeating the sculpt. When I find myself doing this I up the polycount and that forces me to address other issues which tend to lead up to me finishing it off. I can't finish low poly models.....ever. I can turn them low poly after easily though!! lol Ill give it a little clean up and maybe plate it. I just love my titanium burring tools, made removing all the support material a breeze that lasted less than 3 minutes! I think the fact that titanium doesn't hold heat makes it ideal to burr with! especially on PLA which melts VERY easily when burring! Because of these babies I'll never fear cleanup again. Such a pleasure to work with! Just burred and acetone. No sanding......yet. Even though I personally recommend a light sand BEFORE acetoneing! ... actually just thought id add that after the initial acetone application, additional ones have less risk of shrinkage so its fine to sand and acetone lightly again! just makes the areas you sand much cleaner and smoother. ....I also realised what was causing all my past failures of support towers previously. and Its so stupid. I had left the rubber cover open and not even bothered to tuck it in to the head unit, so it was basically flapping all over the model and knocking the supports over.....so stupid!!!! but at lest I can use support in confidence again now!!! And its well tucked in!

I hear you! even though I had to look up eidetic! Thats gonna be my knew fav word! I like it! Like your work!

No the wings are the other way round. Looks alieny to me eitherway good job. Inspiring as usual.

I also think its pretty, and what is that alien looking sex toy thing! that looks funky with al the gyroid stuff looking like veins!! I have plans for something similar but different.

Nothing wrong with Graboids! I love Tremors too!!

Yeah, i had a feeling it was foodsafe, i saw people who made molds for bespoke bread casting in the oven. Very funky!

come on guys acetone doesn't taste that bad! each to their own I guess, but I don't like Marmite. And dont forget acetone evaporates, but i'm not sure what the acetoned residue is, or if its toxic in any way. I guess I could slap detol over it and all that to be sure? Acetone flavoured chocolate anyone? its the next big thing! Besides, when it comes to acetone, there is nothing to be afraid of. Its harmless. Unless you submerge your hands into it a lot....😖

nice choccies! I made candles a while back, always wandered if platinum silicon was food safe, I'd imagine so. just never got round to trying it with food.

Nice, looks like wood before the polishing. I aim to try copperfill or bronze fill next week. I only have a small sample in a bag so im not sure which one it is. Well ill put it on copperfill settng and then....what speed would you use for a 0.6 nozzle at 0.06 layer height out of curiousity? Thanks for the post! I will do the same and do a comparison of copper plates to copper printed and i might even plate the copperfill model to see how it affects the surface quality. Ill aslo see how conductive it is....

No, its an old forum related negative from past migration. The Photo section was a lot nicer, thats all.

Regarding photos in general and a being a photo enthusiast, I think the one thing I preferred about the old forum was the photo/pictures area. The one on this forum is weird and useless. It made it easier looking through models before now you have to know a particular thread or where the pictures were that you saw in the first place. sad face.