cloakfiend

Thanks Sander, im nearing towards my end goal and hope to be there soon, ill let you know when im there. And as for the paint, ive spent a lot of time and money on paints and experimenting with them, so ill keep that to myself for now, and believe people should also experiment more, ive given a lot of information out on this thread as it is. heres one more paint effect, not plated, but this time the paint cracked the model pretty badly, not sure if it was the paint or acetone, and the brush on method can cause cracking due to the inconsistent amounts that are applied. You could buy an aerosol acetone spray, but its a waste of money in my opinion, and id prefer to spend the money on paints or other more useful products... Maybe ill do a separate thread about painting... but its kind of a personal thing for me.

Ill may tell you later, i gotta keep a few secrets...

I did worry about the plug for about 5 minutes because i thought it would be a hassle to get an adaptor, but it turns out that it plugs in to pretty much every adaptor i had, its the 10A 250V in case you were curious, and heres a pic of the plug im putting it in. it works fine all day long with no problems, so problem solved. its for the magnetic stirrer. underneath are pics of green cf pla with brushed on acetone. one directly after, and one 40mins later.

i'm assuming its just an earthed euro plug, after all, its from an Italian product.

....black colorfabb brushed on, no sanding. ill spray it in a minute. i probably didnt apply enough but my acetone is so contaminated i really couldnt tell.

....and very flat objects need to be treated with extreme care or else this happens....

those faces where not sanded or treated at all, they were printed in leaf green colorfabb, and sprayed directly after the acetone. no sanding, no undercoat, just one thin layer of paint, which i rubbed off one by accident and you can even see the pla colour underneath, but i didn't mind as i had under extrusion on that one as i dropped the temps to low again, lol.

....with regards to abs, its more reactive to acetone, so you will lose more detail when applying it, whatever you do with it, ive seen people spraying light coats on, but each to their own, im just showing PLA being smoothed as printing in lower temps means parts in your printer will last longer due to the lower heat and also its easier to manage, and less chance of failure.

these are all 0.04mm i dont see any reason going higher res at the moment....

0.015, damn you must wait a while for your prints! 0.04 on a .4mm nozzle is my limit, the overhangs are pure evil though. im going to try install the OB soon over christmas and see what difference it makes, but considering i need quite thick walls i doubt i will change from using the .4mm nozzle.

....and remember 0.06 layer height or less. 0.1 just doesn't cut it. do it like in the video i posted, i have developed a few other ways of doing it, maybe ill share them later, i dont have the time to be making videos at the moment, im busy doing my showreel. just playing with paints at the moment.

all my big faces were brushed on, not dipped due to the large size. i cant deal with 5litres of acetone in a room anymore, lol. and black colorfabb is one of my favourites next to traffic red, but they all work, leaf green is also very good, as is warm red. this is the top of the face just to show no warping on a flat surface...

You left it in acetone for A DAY!!!! Damn, you clearly haven't read this thread or watched my videos. watch the one with the red face. 45 seconds mate! ......a day, lol.

....however i did already mention that you cannot let the acetone get into the infill or bad things will happen as the acetone cant escape and just continues to work until it has evaporated or been absorbed completely. basically the death of your object. if your getting under extrusion dont waste youre time either as the acetone will get in. also dont print very thin walls due to warping, 1.2 is my standard wall thickness as i have mentioned before. i assume this is the kind of stuff you are talking about?? but the top was ok

what colour did you have? As even with the skankiest acetone on the planet it still works for me whatever the colour. i don't even bother sanding any more, i have learnt to accept the faint lines that remain. if i want it perfect then it simply means i need to put in a bit of effort. this is how my current acetone looks like and it still works just fine.... i know this thread is a bit long, but if you are treating flat objects, then you need to be way more careful due to warping. the brush on method is your only option, soaking will warp and destroy. ive even acetoned stuff ive glued together and its still fine. ...and if the infill dissolved, then its working...

and my latest, just ordered like 80euros worth of random specialist spray paints to experiment with, as i need to find an alternative to silver for electroplating as its just to darn expensive. this is just paint and not plated.

heres my latest paintjob.

a little more practice with my shiny metallic paint before i move on to weaponry... i want to try more flat stuff. the lines should be easier to remove.

i hear you, but i'm still pretty certain you can slice that model. arch viz stuff tends to lend itself quite well to that. you just need to figure out where. its not always the obvious place.

If only i had time to design a gun, i may just buy this one just to see how it looks after painting.

just a metallic shiny face, @ksn-arts, you need to coat the gun with metallic paint like my face, it would look so good. ive always wanted to make a realistic cool looking gun. good job.

in my personal experience, if you dont get a nozzle jam, then you dont ever need to do atomic pulls. i have printed non stop since i have my printer and have used three or four different filaments that i am familiar with in regards to best temps, and have not done any atomic pulls yet. i find you only really need to do them after some kind of spool jam or other heat related faliure when the filament gets burnt. and as for printing off the roll, just cut off as much as will fit, that way you only waste a few metres at most., there is NO alternative, spool jams are always a risk, i've even had filament that was tangled twice mid roll, if i had left it over night on the roll, it would have been a guaranteed failure ending in severe nozzle burn.

And distressed... just a quick note, but dont plate flexible stuff, the plate will just peel right off if your not careful. its happened to me quite a lot. its fragile, but maybe because i'm not doing it right. Also dont pick at the plate either as you will peel it off where it is weak, or was bent, or was dirty when you started to plate it.

Fair enough but white is a pain to print with. Stay away from that colour. If i want something white, i just spray it. I also use colorfabb.

and the results before i distress it....this one didnt work, due to the size (and me not really bothering to calculate surface area and amps, lol) but looks ok-ish after some additional treatments.