cloakfiend

colorfabb all the way. i have the best quality prints i can imagine, besides, the additives make it reactable to acetone, so you can make it smooth. you dont want pure PLA. its useless.

i was seriously thinking about getting one of these for ages, but the additional costs are equal to hundreds of metres of filament which equals tons more prints on the ultimaker. 99 buck is like 400 metres of filament. for replacing a tray after a certain amounts of prints. and its on going. also printing larger objects such as figurines, you tend to waste a lot of resin for the supports, sometimes more resinn than the actual model, so the bullet comparison is a bit in favour of the form but anything bigger and the costs get astronomical. but with my newly discovered acetone dipping technique for pla achieving similar results for pla is as simple as throwing the bullets off the printer into acetone with a few seconds of light sanding on the tops and done. so im holding off until these printers are like 10 times faster. also none of the waste is reusable unlike the ultimaker which you can send off to turn into a new roll, or do it yourself if you have an extruder. so the cost are waaay more expensive. i would only buy this printer if you are seriously good at zbrush and want to print your beautifully detailed models. i dont want to sound rude or anything but printing bullets seems a real waste of time to me for the amazing stuff that printer can do. besides. if you want 500 bullets you should just make a mold from one nicely cleaned up print and just use that. or just make a mold of a real bullet. much easier...

I wish i could do that to my entire flat, lol.

Just to state, I am using 100% acetone, not any form of nail varnish remover or other Acetone based or products containing large amounts of acetone, as soon as the purity drops, it is ineffective. I even poured some acetone into some nail varnish remover to see if it diluted it but it did nothing so i reverted back to using pure acetone. buy 5Ltrs online, that way you will have plenty to play with. then wave goodbye to ABS. This ultimaker blue (that came with the printer), does not hold up like the colorfabb which you can essentially dunk constantly after each bit of light sanding that you apply, and goes MUCH whiter and kind of rougher if you leave the acetone on it for too long. i have not done any sanding on my models prior to dipping like i normally like to do here and there to save the amount of dunks i need to do. But I will print another head just to see, the integrity is fine, and after a coat of paint im sure will look good, but it seems to melt more hence looking OK will less fine prints. The material quality does not appear as high quality as the colour fabb, but if it smooths this good on a 0.1 print after only one dunk, then i'm thinking a higher rez print will be perfect, but will it hold up to printing at higher reziz? Defo do a much thicker shell than standard i recommend 1.2 as it is much more destructive on this PLA than the colorfabb and definitely make sure there are no holes for the acetone to creep in as well.

OK guys here's results of the blue... super close ups.....

OK i just realised the blue is not colorfabb but ultimaker blue, hence the matte finish but i did an amusing tut either way to show how a 0.1 layer print holds up after a 30sec dunk. Pretty good if you ask me......coming soon.

.....and yeah you gotta spray it afterwards or just accept the 'mist' its hit and miss with that sometimes i get it sometimes i dont? Sometimes where i sand i get it somtimes i get it only where i didnt? Weird but im happy to spray after as then i can choose whatever colour i like and imcan spray it with gloss or matte as well, and the model has more detail than vapouring the hell out of it eitherway. Get yourself some colorfabb 'avoid white' calibrate and clean up your printer and test away at different layer heights im going to show in a post of direct comparison of one 30s dip in 0.1 layer height that printed perfectly to the same model before the dip, and the results speak for themselves. No sanding whatsoever. But i would if your printer prints certain layers messed up due to cura or other reasons. As cura is responsible in some cases as ive seen various models on multiple websites printed with the same messups in the same areas. Also dont overdoo the dipping as the acetone leaks in slowly and warping will occur. Same goes for if the acetone gets inside any internal structures, your model will be doomed unless you print with a much thicker shell i use minimum of 1, but i may go to 1.2 (the whole factor of 0.4 thing). Ok enough hijacking your post, sorry...

FYI i use only colorfabb PLA so far black and blue. Both standard cheap 100m rolls for like 20bucks or so. They both appear to look weird and shiny silky straight from the printer but after the acetone they change into some other plastic on a molecular level. It takes about 3 days for the process to completely cure from my personal experience. I did a print at 0.1 today and a small object looks perfect after one 30second dip amd the other i noticed skipping during print so has some lines, but still is smooth. It the printer had not skipped i rekon it could also potentially look much better. Even at 0.08 insted of 0.06 or higher. I was thinking of getting a resin printer, but the costs compared to this are like way more than 20x so im happy maintaing the ultimaker i use and getting near perfect highrez prints after my acetone process, but you MUST make sure you dont get ANY nozzle jams, so the sooner someone gets a better nozzle that prevents jams i think ill put off getting any resin printers. They arent perfect either, but there its tons more waste that is non recyclable and costs waaay more. £50worth of print in resin equates to about £2 - £4 in filament maybe less. You can afford to mess about with filament but not resin yet.

It only remains flexible for about 3-4 days. Then goes rock solid and ultra brittle.

free image host a face of my friend made with autodesks 123. bit of cleanup with 3Dsmax and maya, due to incredibly real bad topology.

Here is a face i made (or should i say my friends face) using autodesks 123, and a quick cleanup using 3dsmax and maya, then to cura, and printed at 0.1 done in PLA colorfabb blue. i wonder how this will look once i smooth it...... Just realised i printed this with a 1mm shell which was a bit silly of me knowing i should have stuck to my usual 0.8 or 1.2...silly me might be the reason for the skipping from all the nozzle jams! free image host

Damn it! that frickin' feeder's gotta go, its such a piece of @!&% just grinding the filament away like a greedy ittle piggy. i thought it was ok, but after the filament cools, its grind mania again. the next thing i print will be a new feeder assembly. Thats the worst thing about this printer. I guess thats the only advantage of printing in ABS for me as this jamming issue never seems to happen!

Colorfabb pla smooths real nice with acetone as well! Big plus! Its strange you didnt get colorfabb pla with your printer they gave me colorfab white and blue with mine. Thats why i guess everyone thinks acetone does nothing to PLA because they have not been using colorfabb...its my personal mission to get it through to people that pla smooths wonderfully with acetone if done right....lol. For real.

Ok seeing as i ran out of black, i though id try the blue again and i did a rush test after tons of cleaning due to much carbonization as i havent used it for a while and im actually very pleased. I think i didnt test the blue properly before and it smooths pretty well even at 0.1! Maybe 0.2 i cant remeber which setting as i just upgraded the cura to 15.1. Ill keep you posted gonna try and print some stuff again, but it seems the material is more feeder friendly too as even when it grinds it seems not as brittle as the black and doesnt jam as much, but im interested to see how good the detail comes out. Doenst seem to be warping much either but i guess ill only really find out in a few hours after its cured.... Yep its warped now, lol but its smooooth, defo gonna do a full model tomorrow.

Sorry yzorg but you are wrong with regards to acetone doing nothing to pla prints. but of course it depends on which pla you are using, as does the effectiveness of acetone on different types of abs. if you dont belive me.... You just have to print higher rez, but you get more detail as a result! I hate acetone on ABS it looks lame and gloopy in my opinion. I think people just like it because it looks glossy. Like apple products, lol. @reibuehl you have to get a vat of acetone and simply dunk your model in it for about 30 seconds, then a bit of light sanding in the problem areas, and another quick dunk, and you will have something far superior to someone doing the same model with ABS.

Ok so here is my last print i have no black filament left for the time being and am concentrating on doing casting molds for the blooms. But i just wanted to show you the destructive power of acetone on pla when you have thin layers and incomplete internal filling, i.e. Loads of nozzle jams and skipping. The model appears ok but i knew it would not smooth well from the beginning as the internal 20% fill was very poor compared to the blooms where it was solid. So if you see the print coming out bad, forget dipping it.

This method does not work on PLA just to let you know. It requires proper soaking. Even brushing it on directly gives very weak results in my opinion.

However if you do this method a lot, it could get quite expensive, as i know spray cans aren't cheap. Perhaps find a plant watering spray bottle that is acetone proof instead, it would be just as effective, but you'd still be wasting more acetone than dunking unfortunately, but at least you'd be saving on spraycans. Just a thought.

Lol, you read my mind. I just ruined a model because i dunked it waaay to long and it had some holes in it and just exploded on me. If you use it on pla then make sure you have no holes in the structure. And dont use it on flat thin surfaces. When you soak pla and then leave it overnight, it actually smooths more than it looks after half an hour. Im still experimenting, but this would be better than brushing it on which is uneven, just to remove the roughness of where youve sanded with fine sandpaper.

OK here is my third tut, sorry its a bit long, but i tried to include as much as i could including some pics and vids of the model printing to the finished result, but that comes at the end of the vid as i printed i a while ago, and just got the vids off my phone yesterday when i made the tut. Its the nice and detailed flower bloom model by edmark. All the detail is kept and looks great in my opinion, ive got no more filament left, so its gonna be a while till my next print, but ive got one more to smooth that printed quite badly even at 35mm, so that will be interesting. obviously its gonna need more sanding, but anyways, i hope it turns out ok!

As long as you dont print on a raft and print real close to the build plate at the start the surface will be smooth, but so long as you dont get nozzle jams or any blocks. Its that simple. Its got nothing to do with fine settings in my opinion.

The um does not like the cold, loads of nozzle jams, i had it in a server rack full of fans and it was a disaster.is best you don't even breath on it when its printing. Just let it be. I always print at pla 210 35 mm at 0.06 now. Used to do 70mm at 230 but no more. Having a real bad time recently. Someone has messed about with the printer i can tell some fan holders are bent and the filament is incorrectly loaded, and nozzle is blocked. Well annoyed, wanted to do a tutorial this weekend, but doesn't look like thats gonna happen.

Id love to see some pics of this on some highly detailed models. Im attempting one now, but my extruder is grinding the hell out of my filament and have none spare.

Damn my feeder ground the filament a bit but i just left it to print hoping it will be ok. I guess not, oh well. Ill be waking up to a mess in the morning then. I was hoping it will soften by the entrance of the head before it pushes through.

I get this all the time, it really sucks. Its the only bad thing about the ultimaker printer. If they solve this, then it would be perfect. My prints go for 40 hours plus so you can see how it might annoy me. Lol. And the phantom nozzle jams. Ok one minute and jammed the next, then extruder is grinding so much you have to rip it out. I just force it in now with pliers, and twist on move material till it gets past that point. Ill see if its jammed in the head (as it sticks out a touch due to the grinding) in the morning, as today it took me 2 hrs to get it going, well annoyed. Shame as i think the filament might run out on me and the model would have been awesome, o well, fingers crossed. I wish there was a little mark on the filament to let you know how much was left as unrolling and rolling it back is a no go.