The New 3D Printing Thread

Finished the 3D model and printed it.

The final one was printed in yellow after a few attempts because they kept warping i.e. this green one sloped down to one side across the whole car.


- Tree

Is warping a common problem on SLA printers? I know with FDM warping can be an issue sometimes, usually with larger prints which can be caused by uneven cooling, but I've never heard it mentioned about SLA prints to date. Just curious :-)

It was most likely due to an uneven print bed for the first one, with the rest it would have been because I tried printing them flat and it stretched the wheels to try to support itself (even with supports mind you). I've had a few issues in the past with things being a tad flatter than originally intended which showed again on the test prints where the standard car orientation of all four wheels on the print bed somehow made the roof cave in. By that I mean everything except the wheels printed to the correct scale but from the bottom of the windows up the roof was flattened by about 35%.

It could just be me not using very good settings as I did try the tilted orientation once which yielded a similar warpage to the green. I upped the curing time from 7.5 to 9.5 seconds per layer, layers increased from 0.2mm to 0.3mm and the time between the LED screen curing each layer was increased. Seems to have worked a lot better with those settings though results and settings vary between resins. The green resin likes finer settings the most so I've gone and ordered some more.

- Tree

I'm planning to get digital calipers soon sonI can measure the coal covers for the Engines I have that don't have them currently.

Good move, they can be got Quite cheaply, typically around £10 in the UK from Amazon or lidl when they have them in stock

Some of you may have noticed on one of the other threads that I mentioned I had a problem with my Ender 3 printer.  Basically the 'x' axis was binding on the right hand upright, causing it firstly to make some nasty noises, but also preventing it from printing any higher than about half an inch - which is a bit limiting.

Anyway today I finally got time to look into the issue and after disassembling the frame, removing the x-carriage (that is the cross bar that the extruder assembly/hot end travels along and moves up and down), I thoroughly cleaned everything to remove any build up of dust or greasy substances.  Then set about adjusting the frame.  It turns out that someone (not me I hasten to add) had leant on it once too often and had caused the uprights of the frame to twist slightly out of alignment.  So I adjusted them back to true, adjusted the offset of the two ends of the x-carriage and generally tidied everything up.  Once all tightened and re-assembled, bed re-levelled etc... I set about producing a test print, I went for a small vase in 'vase' mode (basically it lays down a constant stream of plastic as it circles round the design) as this is the quickest way to test for accurate vertical movement and even extrusion. 

This is the result a perfect little vase (about 6 inches tall);



Now back to my prototype Rebecca Thomas Mini

[Super]

That vase is beautiful

It looks really good. Glad you got it re-aligned.

Nice to see you've managed to adapt my 3D meshes into Plarail meshes, although I'd suggest altering how you have skewed them in some ways.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3330444

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3330401

Boiler and chimney on the Manning Wardle looks really off, any way you can rework your mesh to have a circular smokebox?

The first design I put together (Emily of the Thomas range) which is similar to a rail bus was a long first 3d project for me as I'm new to the 3d tools out there.

When I saw your designs for HO models they seemed perfect for porting to plarail and giving my friends some new bodies to use on common chassis such as the Thomas ones. Adapting them to plarail, was not so easy in order to fit them onto those existing chassis and they are not perfect, but there again they were never meant to be as durability is key over accuracy bearing in mind the target audience for these. They also have to live with the quirks of the original chassis they are modelled to fit onto.

I have to say thanks to your originals, they have inspired me since to produce new designs from the ground up as they gave me some ideas on how to manipulate basic shapes to produce the final designs I have in mind. I'm just finishing off a new one now which will soon be revealed which is a brand new design from scratch. It's a shame the original 3d thread was accidentally deleted during a forum cleanup as you would have seen the origin of your designs were mentioned :-)