cloakfiend

Just gave this one a quick prime to see the problem areas, might have gone a bit heavy with the paint as it gained a skinlike texture, but should be ok. Sometimes it dries quicky, sometimes it takes ages. I guess many thin coats is far better than one thicker one. Its hard to do many coats though as you need zen patience and not give into the temptation of over spraying which is very easy. I give into temptation too easily. I could have spent more time on the faces but im going to distress it later anyway so maybe for the next version.

Didnt have time to finish this dude today gotta go to a wedding. Long journey means ill have time to finish few jobs off! Acetoned him today though still needs a bit of cleanup from all that support but at least his hands back on.

Well here is the warhammer shapeshifter....took me like 10 minutes to get him out! I got a little impatient but didnt want to break anything else!

45mins of this nightshift to go dammit, I want to just leave now. This is my last nightshift for a while, but I got a wedding after which is annoying, I had so much wanted to finish off a whole load of things but annoyingly people get married. I already wasted 4 days in Bratislava getting smashed for a stag do, now the wedding. Another 4 damn days? what happened to one day weddings, pop down the registry office and then drinks?. Jeeze, some people are so demanding. i'm only going for three days as a protest, I need to finish this guy today so the acetone can evaporate properly overnight, will plate him tomorrow! The benefit if you brush on acetone, is that you don't need to worry about shrinkage as much as when you dip it! or dont need to worry about it taking so long to harden. You can generally turn things around a lot quicker!

Thanks, good to know, as my UM2 is getting old now, will remember this should it happen to me one day.

I know nothing else will fail, so its just the hand to fix! This is the real reason why I got an Ultimaker! I dont even think a resin print would be much better. I haven't put in enough detail to warrant a resin print, This one should be perfect, I can even see the tear i made on his arm. I have bought new copper, new acid copper solution and new conductive inks. Yet, I still feel i've missed something, Oh well. I'm going to print another version of this when I get home on the UM2 as I have something else for the S5.... ....just need to make sure I mix the copper plating solution properly this time, and not go down the cooking path. Just a note comparing print times, I found this quite interesting. A print on the S5 with no support @30mm/s is pretty much exactly the same as a print on the UM2 @20mm/s with support. So surface smoothness will be pretty much identical as @20mm/s on the UMS is almost the same as 30mm/s on the S5, maybe a little better, but it does have stepper lines unlike the S5, however these are easily removed and I really dont mind them compared to layer lines, which are no good to me.

Thanks, Ill give that a go when I get back in 9Hrs! My Shapeshifter should be done now! ooh can't wait to get back!!

Ca you show me the setting that only puts a bit of pva between the support and object, I would be keen to give that a go! In the meantime, this print is shaping up real nice!!!! oh this ones gonna be sexy!

Haha. I find cura support random, and at 0.06mm much more opportunity to hit. Almost twice as likely as 0.1 and 4 time more likely than 0.2. I have also had stupidly long ones at times but i dont tweak much just speed settings mainly. I use default support. Works 75% of the time. Ive had them break halfway and repair themselves as well though. Oh well i just have to accept the fact that it happens. I also print with fast settings of inner layers which might be the problem 70 mm/s. But who knows? i have never seen it happen on my um2 in 4 years....mind you support was like 2mm thick in cura back then lol. Goodnight fella!!!!

14 more hours to go....apparently. means it will finish 2 hours into my next nightshift. Shame the printer will be doing nothing for the next 10ay as well use the time to prep my next print.... Can't wait to cut this one out!!!! Yay! I hope the head doesnt fail!! That would be a deal breaker, but seeing as i forgot to tilt his head like in the picture, ill print him again on my UM2 and do a surface quality comparison. Ok im gonna kip for a bit now!

Well turns out the hand failed after all but in a nice and easy way i can easily fix it back on. Shame though. There really needs to be support for the support material. The towers should join once they hit a certain height. Tall towers that aren't connected to anything fall over way too easily. Especially on the S5 compared to the UM2 with its heavier head. I kinda thought it may fail but if you don't try then you'll never really know. it just means ill alter how i make the support in the future. You live and you learn! Practice makes perfect! I now reckon that all supports MUST touch at the base as when the head moves across it just smashes it over otherwise. Towers that don't join that are close to each other have a high risk of getting knocked over especially when they support a new part of the object that is to rejoin another part further on on the print.

Only 3 Hours to go! cant wait to see how my Shapeshifter has come along! My main errors are forgetting little things like support, or forgetting to change something on the model like eyes or hair, or some other area I meant to refine. But as I said earlier, the harder I try to make everything perfect and timely, things tend to go wrong. Out of 10 things I do 9 go well and I forget to prepare for the remaining 1. But as you said when in autopilot, things tend to get done extremely quickly, I plated 8 Heads in one day! That was a record for me, nice thick plates too! Sometimes I actually find myself thinking about something far longer than the thing takes me to do. Procrastinating for too long is another main problem. I need clients to give me deadlines, no deadline with me means you may never get what you wanted regardless of how much you are paying. Im entering the frame of mind of actually finishing pieces off (or at least printing a version of them) rarther than endlessly changing them along with many others and never getting round to printing them. I have a list of things to finish that is way too long. Im not doing any new things now unless all the old ones are done. Bar a few of course. I always have time for scanning naked ladies! ?

I am also a total night own, its often quite hard to get hold of me at times. I don't mind, but 12 straight hours in a row can be pretty tiring. Especially when I have an idea but have to wait ages before I can execute it! I cant wait for this piece to be done, I've delayed it for ages. I have like 6 big jobs I've been putting off. 3 of them need the width of the S5 the others can be done on a UM2.

I just got 5 and a half more hours of my night shift left! ahhhh! so tired!

Boy life is taking me the long way round alright, I still dont know where I'm going to end up! Owning your own kit is a massive advantage.

Damn you use all that space! my next project is going to use all the space too but not go so high. I'd need like 2 weeks to do that in 0.06! but i guess with plain things with no surface detail it would be ok to finish. And yes indeed come to think of it some people do like the look, its true, I've heard that too, some people actually told me to leave the lines! Yay no post post work. I guess i understand, but for myself I like things as close to perfect as i can get. I think the people who ask to leave the lines want to make sure that others around them know or can visually see that it has indeed been 3D printed. Whilst on the other hand the people who I show my prints to ask me why they cant see any layer lines that they are used to observing from 3D prints. Each to their own I guess. The quality I try to get my prints to is simply not necessary for some people and I just have to accept that. I have quality OCD issues.

Ah, I was referring to 15% of regular support material. I just hate long print times, and want to see my stuff ASAP. The default support i think is great, but long towers need some kind of extra help as they just cant stand up on their own, this is where things fail. I glue pieces of filament between the towers to strengthen them, but just now realize i forgot to do one and im at work now. oh well maybe it wont have gotten to it by the time i get back? My main reason for FDM use over resin is cost. This is why i dont invest in resin. Mess and cost. After initially cancelling buying the makerbot which i was going to buy in the beginning, and looking at all other printers, it became apparent that the UM2 was superior and quicker, so I got that at the time. Many people on the net (I'd estimate 95%) don't consistently print higher than 0.1, because they don't see much quality differences, but they are huge. You just need post production to see them. Being able to finish your prints is essential to having them look great, and this just seems to be another hurdle people don't seem eager to cross, just accepting the lines. I hate the lines on smooth surfaces. Once you learn to clean up prints, it really doesnt take long at all, a few hours max to be perfect. All you really need is a pair of small pliers to rip out the support, a set of needle files, a dremel for mass grinding and burring, and some 240- 320 grit sandpaper, and a good eye. This is why making your own support is advised because you can make it in a way that makes it easy to remove and in places that you can reach easily. also it guarantees a successful print. Printing anything in 0.1 is simply a waste of time for me. It would take me far too long cleaning it up to be worth my while, hence 0.06. Just curious but what layer height do you regularly print in @kmanstudios? and do lines bother you? and if not why not? I use the UM2/UMS5 because I can easily achieve a line free-ish surface. Which was my whole reason for buying the printer in the first place. I thought theacetoe vapour method would do it to ABS but I soon found out that destroyed far more details than was worth doing it and was unpredictable and smooth surfaces weren't geometrically smooth, but more shiny. I think people confuse shiny with smooth. and ABS and acetone on a sphere does NOT produce a perfectly smooth surface, but more of an unevenly smooth and shiny surface. The key word here being unevenly. That to me is a deal breaker. Acetone on PLA produces consistently smooth surfaces, you only need to watch out for thin part warping, but seeing as you arent simply dunking it into a vapour chamber, you can apply varied amounts of acetone to parts that need it more than others. I just ruined my antique table and am going to attempt to re-veneer it! lol, should be a laugh never done that before. M

This will then be a non pva use guide. The generic support setting of 15% seems pretty solid to me. We shall see in a few hours!

Im new to this and just want a button that says minimal pva use. But yes this model will be my pride and joy. If not ill print it again until it is!

Hey guys, way more pics to follow, but here is the beggining of a WIP job based on my favourite front cover of a book ever 'Forest of Doom'. I thought I'd show you the techniques I used to print this really 3d printer unfriendly model and the small but important things you need to do it. I decided not to use PVA due to the reason that i dont need bottom details and can therefore sand it out easily, also print time is drastically less and no wait time is needed to see that actual model, so the time spent waiting for the PVA to melt is spent finishing the model which you would have to do regardless, I still believe that too much PVA is used in support and there needs to be a more efficient use of pve with some sort of dual system where only the support that actually touches the model is PVA and the rest is the same material as the model. The main difficulty was the fingers pointing down (or anything else small and long pointing down lol) as the support would only be from the fingertips which would no way be strong enough to support the entire arm before it joined up. Also print time is predicted to be around 2 days 2 hrs so it will be around 2days 6 or 7 hours by my experience. Still printing, 1 day remaining. Just the tree trunk done here so far....

and after acetone.... I did a few brush-on attempts with this one and as a result there are a few residual lines fro the repeat processes overlapping one another, but nothing major. The surface looks super smooth so im happy, I might do (acetone) the base again as the lines are still slightly visible due to it being almost completely flat. It should look totally cool plated, cant wait. Even the undersides look look after the wash, a bit of light sanding will work wonders! I'd say the most bizzare thing about acetoning your work is that it camouflages how it really looks. If I'd only show acetoned prints you would probably say they look poor quality. That is the big deception and what I genuinely think put people off doing it. Iooking at my pictures I bet you cant even tell whats going on! I certainly cant! Bright red is one of the worst colours to photograph and save as JPEG. The next time you'll see it, it should look real good. I'll do closeups then, its a waste of time doing closeups of red prints on my smartphone.

Those biodegradable coffee cups say they are made from pla. And what else though???

if we bump into each other again ill take you through it! join the alchemists circle. cloakfiend's ultimate smoothing circle! ? haha

and a before and after for a nice comparison!

Here are a few pics of the mods i made, basically mirrored the wings on his feet and helmet because i didnt like the ones on the model, I think the scan may have gone weird and I missed it Just lopped them of with some pliers. Drilled some tiny holes for support when gluing. worked great. Will acetone it tonight and should be ready in a few days!