In early April, I was asked to make a model of a pistol called "The Last Word" from the video game Destiny as a birthday present. I found a model I liked on the site MyMiniFactory.com and started trying to print it. This commission has been the connecting thread running through nearly all my experiences with the Rostock since I first got it printing.
First attempt was just the handle on coarse settings, to get an idea of how big it would be in real life. I printed the two halves side-by-side, then glued them together. They warped pretty badly:
The warping prompted me to get started on the heated build chamber.
Once I had the chamber assembled, but before I added the heat lamp, I tried again. This time I combined the files for the handle and the body into one print, with the infill set at 50%:
50% infill was too high. I aborted the print and tried again, going back to 30% infill:
I still had pretty bad warping on the handle, and I don't really know what caused the last dozen layers to start drifting like that. It happened while the print ran overnight, and the error has not repeated since.
Once I got the heat lamp installed and the heated chamber completed, I tried printing the handle and body that would mate with my previous attempt. This time the X-tower belt broke about half-way through the print.
At this point, the birthday for which this piece had been commissioned had arrived. I assembled the two largest failed prints, along with some of the smaller pieces that had successfully printed, as a sort of "IOU" that I could present at the birthday party.
This turned out to be for the best: The gun is pretty huge, even without the barrel (which I had not even attempted to print yet). The recipient requested I scale down the whole thing to 80%.
Once I got the belt fixed and added a second heat lamp to the Rostock, I made a fresh attempt at the 80% scale model. At this point, the cold end of the extruder over-heated and jammed about a quarter of the way through. Literally minutes after I last checked the printer before going to bed.
As you can see, the 80% scale is a pretty significant reduction in size.
Once I moved the extruder cold end outside the heated chamber, I tried again. After a few false starts due to poor bed leveling or bad bed prep, I had a success!
I still had a little warping on one corner (the heated chamber was only at 40C), so I stuck a helper disc on that corner for the mating print. There was also a lot of stringing (kinda hard to see in this photo). Stringing is usually due to poor retraction, and since I increased the length of the bowden tube by more than 50% when I moved the extruder outside the heated chamber but did not adjust the retraction settings, I should have expected this. I made a small adjustment on the next part and see how that turns out.
The helper discs worked perfectly! No warping at all on the next print:
I had adjusted the retraction from 6.7mm to 10mm, which reduced the stringing but did not eliminate it.
I also knocked out the chamber, which I printed without support. It's pretty.
Interestingly, one of the skirts got dragged under the first layer and I was unable to fish it out before the first layer was printed:
Progress Pic:
The barrel turned out pretty nicely for the first try. I set it up so the two files comprising the barrel printed at the same time. Unfortunately, that still left a visible seam - I'll have to develop my CAD skills to fix that kind of thing in the future.
A quick zip-tie assembly of all the finished parts:
Gluing the pieces together. I had to go out and buy more clamps:
I modeled up my own "pin" to hold the chamber onto the hinge, and was so excited to see the finish line that I forgot to take a picture. The hinge itself pivots on a piece of nail, so there shouldn't be any worry of the hinge wearing out. Here it is with the glue drying:
Aaaaaaaand here's the final product!
Just shy of two month's worth of hobby time. Phew.
Original file here.
Nozzle: 230C
Bed: 100C
Chamber: 50C
Layer height: 0.2mm
Speed: 40mm/s
Time: around 40 hours for the final version.
Material: Hatchbox ABS
 |
| Someone else's (successful) print |
The warping prompted me to get started on the heated build chamber.
Once I had the chamber assembled, but before I added the heat lamp, I tried again. This time I combined the files for the handle and the body into one print, with the infill set at 50%:
50% infill was too high. I aborted the print and tried again, going back to 30% infill:
I still had pretty bad warping on the handle, and I don't really know what caused the last dozen layers to start drifting like that. It happened while the print ran overnight, and the error has not repeated since.
Once I got the heat lamp installed and the heated chamber completed, I tried printing the handle and body that would mate with my previous attempt. This time the X-tower belt broke about half-way through the print.
At this point, the birthday for which this piece had been commissioned had arrived. I assembled the two largest failed prints, along with some of the smaller pieces that had successfully printed, as a sort of "IOU" that I could present at the birthday party.
This turned out to be for the best: The gun is pretty huge, even without the barrel (which I had not even attempted to print yet). The recipient requested I scale down the whole thing to 80%.
Once I got the belt fixed and added a second heat lamp to the Rostock, I made a fresh attempt at the 80% scale model. At this point, the cold end of the extruder over-heated and jammed about a quarter of the way through. Literally minutes after I last checked the printer before going to bed.
Once I moved the extruder cold end outside the heated chamber, I tried again. After a few false starts due to poor bed leveling or bad bed prep, I had a success!
I still had a little warping on one corner (the heated chamber was only at 40C), so I stuck a helper disc on that corner for the mating print. There was also a lot of stringing (kinda hard to see in this photo). Stringing is usually due to poor retraction, and since I increased the length of the bowden tube by more than 50% when I moved the extruder outside the heated chamber but did not adjust the retraction settings, I should have expected this. I made a small adjustment on the next part and see how that turns out.
The helper discs worked perfectly! No warping at all on the next print:
I had adjusted the retraction from 6.7mm to 10mm, which reduced the stringing but did not eliminate it.
I also knocked out the chamber, which I printed without support. It's pretty.
Interestingly, one of the skirts got dragged under the first layer and I was unable to fish it out before the first layer was printed:
Progress Pic:
The barrel turned out pretty nicely for the first try. I set it up so the two files comprising the barrel printed at the same time. Unfortunately, that still left a visible seam - I'll have to develop my CAD skills to fix that kind of thing in the future.
A quick zip-tie assembly of all the finished parts:
Gluing the pieces together. I had to go out and buy more clamps:
I modeled up my own "pin" to hold the chamber onto the hinge, and was so excited to see the finish line that I forgot to take a picture. The hinge itself pivots on a piece of nail, so there shouldn't be any worry of the hinge wearing out. Here it is with the glue drying:
Aaaaaaaand here's the final product!
Just shy of two month's worth of hobby time. Phew.
Original file here.
Nozzle: 230C
Bed: 100C
Chamber: 50C
Layer height: 0.2mm
Speed: 40mm/s
Time: around 40 hours for the final version.
Material: Hatchbox ABS
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