Any prints from the Beta team?

[mike_biddell]

Love the update, I always thought a print simulator would be a great diagnostic tool.

[jstrack2]

I have been printing several Yodas. All still have holes, but I have learned some from printing them.


The first one I printed that I showed before is about 22mm tall and is filled with holes. The head, front and back all have holes. It is one layer thick.
20140928_233220.jpg

Next I printed a larger Yoda that was two layers thick. It is about 33mm, but this is because I didn't calibrate the z-axis well. It should be about 40mm. It has significantly fewer holes, with a lot by his throat, but just some small ones scattered throughout the rest of him. He is nearly hole free in the back. The next three prints had no holes in the back.
20140928_233208.jpg

Next I recalibrated the z-axis so it is about 40mm tall this time. Also I made Yoda three layers thick. He has about the same amount of holes as last time in similar locations, although as I mentioned there are no holes in the back.
20140928_233132.jpg

Next I set the "Bottom/Top thickness (mm)" Cura setting to 0.14mm (from 0mm for the previous prints). This tells Cura to fill in flat surfaces to get filled in. If say you have a small cube stacked on a big cube and have this setting at 0 then the small cube won't print, since the top of the big cube will be not filled in and thus the little cube will have nothing to stand on. Since Yoda has so many tight curves I wondered if the computer thinks tiny places on him are flat too and is not printing them. This turned out to be true. By making this change there is less holes, especially in the throat area. Still there are some holes though. It is three layers thick and 40mm tall again.
20140928_233120.jpg

Next I again printed a 40mm tall three layer Yoda. This time I set the "Bottom/Top thickness (mm)" Cura setting to 1mm. It very slightly reduced the holes, but nothing very significant at all. However it did make Yoda look significantly uglier in my opinion.
20140928_233410.jpg

[jstrack2]

Finally I kept the same settings as last time except made a big Yoda. This Yoda is about 65mm tall. I accidentally significantly overcured him though since I got the laser better focused when preparing for this print, so the results weren't so great. This is why it looks rough. Also it has holes all throughout the bottom part of him (front and back) and some other ones randomly scattered. As with every single print there is a hole by the eyebrows.
20140928_233235.jpg

Here are all of the prints together so you can see the relative sizes.
20140928_233045.jpg


I will keep trying to improve things and will post the results later.

[ijmok]

jstrack2 thats awesome,

Presumably a tighter focus translates into finer detail prints, 65mm is taller than 80% of the parts i print with my current FFF Printer,

Does anyone have a firm theory on what's causing holes at the minute? or is that something hopefully the simulator will improve?

Either way awesome work, its really good to see peachy delivering recognisable but more critically repeatable results in the wild

Rob

[rylangrayston]

jstrack2 thats awesome,

Presumably a tighter focus translates into finer detail prints, 65mm is taller than 80% of the parts i print with my current FFF Printer,

Does anyone have a firm theory on what's causing holes at the minute?....

Rob

Nathan and I just filmed an update this morning about all the causes of holes we have found so far. Many were found using the print simulator, and others were found by people therorizing and testing, and watching the printer closely.

Big thanks to jstrack and to tookys both of whom are very activley using their printers right now, and spotting many things we didnt know about, such as the effect of the "Bottom/Top thickness (mm)" Cura setting.

[iplayfast]

Nathan and I just filmed an update this morning

Just so you know, I love these updates. it makes me feel like I'm involved with the project even though I'm a lurker. Also one of the things that was mentioned near the beginning of this saga was that you always try to make things so they want to be were you want them to be, and this is how you came up with the water leveling innovation. Ryan you're an inspiration!
(gush gush).

[jstrack2]

Here is a rook that I just printed.

20141017_234341.jpg 20141017_234251.jpg 20141017_230919.jpg

I programmed an Arduino Mega and used it instead of the sound card. I was having problems with my laser before so when I replaced it I really underestimated how bright the new laser was. Therefore this print is way way overcured. Also the beam isn't as focused as it should be. This cut down on the resolution some. Still it isn't too bad. The last picture includes the rook that I did a few weeks ago. The new rook is about 50 mm tall.

[3dspider]

Wait... this is a possibility? The peachy might be able to be run from an arduino? That would be very nice indeed, if I could use an arduino, a usb power supply, and a sd card shield to run a peachy without having it take up a smartphone or computer. I was planning on using a chromebook running crouton for my host, but if i could get it running on an arduino, that would be even better.

[jstrack2]

Yeah I think that could be done. Also I think eventually using a cheaper microcontroller might be nice too. I should also point out that the double helix in this rook did print, but it somewhat blurred together from overexposure and the beam being not well focused.

[Feign]

I sure would love to see something in those pictures for scale... As is I can't quite tell if that new Rook is thumb sized or soda can sized (I never really got a good idea of the previous Rook's size either).

I'm excited for when I'll get mine. May-June feels so far away, I was hoping I would be able to print some things from it for my wedding, but as it is I'll only have a month to do anything with it.
Nothing against the Peachy, but I'm glad I had a backup plan.