3d printing nerd gifts (1) - wattle and daub fencing

 I was chatting with Doug (dots of paint) after unveiling my 3d printed tacam tank destroyer and mentioned i could easily make some stuff if he wanted. After the initial impressive laundry list he trimmed it down. Wattle & Daub fences was one of them. I thought a post might be worthwhile because there was some interest in my tank, and I realize it's a bit of a black art until you dive head first into the huge pool of data/websites/youtube videos/etc when you finally try and make your own printer work. 

First stop was "thingiverse" which is a website full of free offerings (.stl is the file format you are generally looking for). Sure enough I found a likely candidate, downloaded it, and fired it up in the slicer. 

The STL files are simply (or really complicatedly) 3 dimensional objects. 3d printers are, inherently, pretty dumb pieces of equipment.....they just want to know where to move and when to blob out some material (or for resin printers, when to shine the light and for how long before lifting the plate). Slicers are the translation program from stl to printing instructions. Most of the gruesome optimization work with printers is getting the 'right' settings in the slicer program that give good performance in real life. In my case it's done currently working (it always stops eventually...usually for mysterious reasons).

Inside Cura you can see the yellow image of the fence, there is a square grid showing my 'printing plate'. You have options to change the orienation of the piece, resize it, and uhhhhh....mostly that's it. Besides the hundreds of settings that affect actual printing stuff. This particular piece looked like it wouldn't need any extra supports to avoid collapsing/lifting/falling so I was able to print 'as is'. 

The line on the left is a priming line. It's optional but it makes sure the filament is running properly. I usually note that there's a good inch or two at the beginning that is meh which is why I leave this option on. 

The printer is currently printing the 'brim' which is about 5-7mm of extra material on the base/first level. It assists with making sure the piece doesn't start to lift or move during printing.

 

 

 Print complete. Uhhh.......seems a bit low to me.

 

 

 

 

In comparison to  a similar fence from GW. I'll boost it up to match. Within cura I set the 'Z' axis to match the measure height. I could do it by % increase instead but in this case I'm targeting a specific height rather than a ratio (as you might when changing scales).

Next test print looks much better. You can see the difference between the height of the first (on the right) and the second. I now dump a few copies on the build plate in Cura and set up for a multi print. Each section takes somewhere between 2 and 3 hours.

A close up of the final product you can see it's hard to notice 'print lines'. The horizontal levels that show every time the printer lifts and starts printing. Certainly on flat faces it's more noticeable. At the top posts you see a bit of stringy flash (for wont of a better word). Stringing is a undesirable thing that is hard to get rid of. When the printing head stops squirting out goop (stops extruding) there can still be some pressure in the system and a little extra oozes. This is a familiar effect to hobbyists wielding testors airplane glue. 

The strings are usually seen between isolated structures that require stop/go printing. Such as these posts. I have spent a lot of time trying to eliminate stringing. I have given up. 

The final picture shows the miniature (50%) fences. Doug wanted some to try using for buildings as exposed wattle in damaged areas (I think). They are pretty small, so hopefully they fit the bill. 

I've packaged and sent the post on Thursday, so I imagine it'll show up sometime this week.