Saturday 11 March 2017

My greatest fan!

With a beautiful test cube under my belt, it was time for total hubris: Printing the duct fan. Also, one possible explanation for the stripping is that the fan blows on the hotend, cooling it down and causing back pressure. This is my first 4-hour print and it worked, until towards the top it started to underextrude, and then eventually, right at the very top, it stripped. Le sigh.

It's my greatest fan... duct.

Total strippage
The nut traps were just about perfect - I had to hammer in a couple of the nuts, but then they would fall out.

Around the nozzle, the print was into thin air, and it shows.

More amazingly, this bridge was built across nothing, and it worked. Printers are magic.

This is the crazy backup solution in case the printed one doesn't work: Cut two old ones to match up.
Somewhat bummed by the renewed stripping, I decided to try attaching this duct anyway. It was fiddly work, with very small tolerances. I had to add a washer on the inner screws due to the stripping having cut a bit off the height. Otherwise, the X belt would hit the top of the duct. But it actually fit.

Now is the time for... another cube, of course. Yes, it looks nice. The printer has not suddenly become fatally broken. More interestingly, another boat.


Benchy McBenchface, fan duct edition.

The boat came out much better this time, only one weird strip on the hull, only slight cracks on the foredeck.

Still these cracks in top surfaces, like the boxes

You can almost tell what it says
In other news, I am using half-round sticks for hanging posters, with magnets holding them together. For that purpose, I need precision-drilled holes, no more than 3mm deep, right in the center. The obvious thing to do is to design and print a guide. Took me about 2 hours to design a highly parameterized one. I'm getting used to OpenSCAD.

Since I need my laptop for other purposes, I went all the way with the Pi and just started OctoPrint, then uploaded some pieces and started printing, first the guide. Problem with this is that when you start a print from another room, you might forget details like Z calibration and hairspray. All the more reason to get the calibration automated. And of course I need to mount a webcam that can look under the duct. I have the cam, just need to design a thing it can sit on.

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