The New 3D Printing Thread

The white-ish discolouration in the middle of the rail is caused by my trying out the technique of washing with ethyl acetate which is meant to be a solvent for PLA and good for smoothing out any general roughness. All it did was put a white film on the surface. Maybe it was too dilute in the product (nail varnish remover) that I found in my local pharmacist?

I cannot overstate how grateful I am to Nigels for committing his time and resources to this project. Now I just need to negotiate an acceptable price for a couple or three more. We can't expect him to go on doing these things for free!

Hi Chris,

I think you'll find out the ethyl acetate wash (vapours work just as well if not better) is really for use on ABS plastics not PLA.  To my knowledge there are no smoothing techniques like that for PLA, what most people do if they want a shiny finish to an ABS print is to suspend it in an upside down jar or similar and pour some of the acetate into the lid which you then place the jar onto.  The main issue with that though is that you not only get a shiny finish, but if left too long you will lose all detail on the print, the reaction also continues for a period after you remove the model from the fumes and it has to dry/solidify for hours.  Until then it is sticky as hell and if you touch it you can leave finger prints or whatever in the surface.

It would be very interesting to see a bit of video of one of them being printed.  

Is it printed in three pieces as per https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5390179 ?

What's your rough estimate of the cost of printing one pier?

The reason for designing the pier to print in 3 parts would be to save filament and printing time as well as improve the look of the final piece I reckon.  If you print it as one piece standing up in its normal orientation you will need a lot of supports for the 'arch' or underside of the top cross-piece or it will fail as a print.  An alternative would be to print it laying face down (so you have a 'U' pattern on your build plate).  The downside to this is you may get some dodgy surface that would need fixing on the side facing the print bed and still need supports for any large overhangs.  Print it as 3 pieces and it should print easily and quicker.  The only problem with this is making sure you can glue the legs to the cross piece securely enough that it is strong enough to survive use and handling