Monday 13 January 2014

Cicero D'Avila

I have continued in my efforts to make a good print of the sculpture inspired by the Cicero D'Avila pose in my previous post.


Firstly, I remade the arm pose, tipping the woman's head back to improve the angle of the face and prevent the arm support material from falling across it.

 

This smaller version was printed on a delta printer in red PLA and showed that the model was printable although the underside of the arms is still very ragged following removal of the support material.

At this point I decided to change the arm position again, opting for a more vertical configuration that would hopefully avoid the need for any support material. 


Once again I decided to shortcut the process of making the model printable by using Project Miller to re-skin the mesh. Unfortunately, the model still had some errors which resulted in malformed Gcode when I tried to slice it with Slic3r and Kisslicer. This time I found that the new version of Cura (I'm using 13.12) offered some very useful advanced options including Combine Everything (Type B) under the Expert settings. The Gcode looked very good in Repetier Host so I set off the 12 hour print and this time I finally managed to produce a model that does justice to the sculpture I had planned.

Here's a timelapse video made inside the printer using Octoprint.


Some detail shots taken before the smoothing process.







And after smoothing in acetone vapour to remove the print lines and support blemishes.


One more video of the finished product.




5 comments:

  1. Thanks Donny. this model is 13 cm tall and was printed with a layer height of 0.15 mm. I could try going down to 0.1 mm but the print times get so long! I also still have a bit more tweaking of the nozzle temperature to do, trying to avoid occasional splitting of layers. This one was done at 240°C and I could probably still go a little hotter.

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  2. Hi,
    Great blog and great work !
    I would be very interested if you could write a post about which technique you use.
    And would also love to hear about your acetone vapor smoothing process because I allways fail mine.
    You may (or may not) like one nude figure I made. Please see my blog here : http://www.reppersdelight.spacymen.com/index.php/post/2011/03/10/Testing-a-BfB3000-with-dual-extruders

    Cheers !

    Anar

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    Replies
    1. Hi Anar
      Thanks for your comments. Have you read through the blog from the beginning? There are many tips and links that you may find useful. Also some explanation of the reasons why I can't be more specific about what I do. I hope that this situation will change sometime this year when a certain software company finally sorts out its licensing policy.

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    2. Yes I finally found a few tips and I know which is the main software you use so I understand now the problem you have for sharing or selling your artwork.
      I posted you another comment on an early post and suggested an alternative software. I hope it will be helpful.
      Keep on the good work !

      Anar

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  3. Hello, Very nice work, outstanding !
    I have a request, could you tell me which brand of blue ABS filament you used for this model (video)? Yours look perfect, and many brands don't smooth so well with acetone.

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