Laywoo-D3 update

After a total of around 8 hours of printing with the Laywoo-D3 with no blockages I'm fairly confident that the .5mm nozzle has done the trick. Enlarging the UP nozzle also hasn't seemed to have had a detrimental effect on ABS or PLA printing either!

Something I have learned is this material really likes plenty of air. Very much like PLA in this regard. Otherwise it has a tendency to become quite stringy.

I printed the terracotta warrior again but with maximum fill. This gave a pleasing weight to it. Much more like a real piece of wood, more so than the previous hollow print. The other thing I discovered is that the layer bonding is excellent, and the parts, although they flex a little, are very hard to break.

This is a tornado I printed at .15mm. Its a little furry.

Wooden Warrior!

Well being all out of terracotta.....

My first test a few weeks ago with Laywoo-D3 wasn't so succesful on the UP. The nozzle quickly became blocked after about 15 min. So I abandoned further prints until I could get hold of a .5mm nozzle. In the end I bought some .5mm drill bits and enlarged a spare nozzle I had. Stock size is .4mm I think.

So today I tried printing out a scan of a terracotta warrior I scanned with 123D catch a few months back. The print took around 1 hour 22 min, significantly longer than any other print I had tried. I printed at .15mm layers and minimum fill, to save wood. The 1.7mm wood is rather rare at the moment.

The fact it printed without any blockages is hopefully due to the larger nozzle, but I could have just got lucky. More printing will tell I guess. But I successfully swapped back to ABS without any issues.

The wood is quite stringy, as you can see between the feet, kinda like PLA, but what I love is the wood feel of the object. It really feels like a piece of wood. In this case cardboard, due to being almost hollow. Its quite soft too, but I think it will harden up in a day or so. Also note the layers are almost completely invisible!

Nozzle too cold

There have been quite a few iterations of the "wind barrier" for the UP Plus printer, the latest of which is an adjustable flap to allow you to swap between air blowing over the print and not. The latest printers, so I am told, also have larger fans, which allow for even better cooling. Especially helpful during PLA printing.

Anyway, I've been occasionally getting "Nozzle too cold" errors when having the flap set to full open. It seems like the heater just can't keep up. So I thought I would try and do something to help insulate the element from the blowing air. What I have done is applied ( quite messily) high temperature silicone to the side and bottom of the heater element, but not the nozzle. I also applied it to the heater wires, that have a nasty tendency to break after a while, to help support them.

High temp silicone should be available at most auto parts stores.

So far so good! Even with the flap closed there is a small amount of air that escapes the barrier. This seemed enough to cool my hot end to about 98%. No problem really, its only when it gets to around 93 that it stops printing. So far the temp is reading 100% all the time, with or without the fan blowing on it. The other added benefit is that stray filament doesn't stick all over the heater making a nasty mess.

Christmas star

A customer recently sent me a photo of a star he printed for their Christmas tree.

Santa should have no trouble finding his way to this tree!

Printed with Crysta-Line Topaz on a Solidoodle 2 printer.

The files for this can be found at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14846

The same customer also sent me a logo he printed. Its a beaker with blue "liquid".

Lithonator....

Thought I might try something a little less "family" orientated.

You can download and print this yourself, although be warned, its a ~100mb file, so could take some slicing....

This was done at .15mm on an UP! (currently on special at $1499)

 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34491

Its Here! Photo to Mesh V3

The new version of Photo to Mesh V3 is now here! What's so exciting you ask ? Well cylindrical lithophanes of course! Plus a host of other great new features.

Here are just a few examples of what I have printed over the last few days. All printed on an UP! printer at .15mm layer height.

This first one has 3 photos printed on the outside. Done by stitching 3 photos together then importing it as one new photo.

Lucky enough we just had our first baby boy just a few weeks ago, so I have the perfect subject.

A group shot.

Below is a print I made without any smoothing. I had falsely thought the printer wasn't capable of resolving the full detail, but I was stunned at just how good it could look. I now have to go back and print my earlier ones as they now look blurry in comparison.

Be one of the first to own a copy. You can get it HERE

Thanks Owen Ransen for all your hard work developing this great piece of software.

Lithophanes revisited

Something very exciting is about to happen in the lithophane world. Stay tuned....