Shawn's Printed DRK-1

[kresty]

A post on a third droid in one day?  Hmm, that's a lot of droids...

I've also printed some of the "sensor" bits and the short antenna and one half of each of the two sensor balls.  (Ok, I misread the file names and didn't realize they didn't go together )

Shawn's 3D Printed DRK-1
Using Savage's Plans

Shawn's 3D Printed DRK-1
Using Savage's Plans

One thing that I'm really, really happy with is the fin bits. They'd barely worked before, but I stuck them on their adjacent disks this time and they printed brilliantly. I really like how that worked out.

Shawn's 3D Printed DRK-1
Using Savage's Plans

And I was able to assemble the entire subunit. The post needed a bit of filing, my slicer apparently stuck all of the layer changes at the same spot, so there was a little ridge, but it wasn't bad at all.

Shawn's 3D Printed DRK-1
Using Savage's Plans

For the "antigrav" thingy, I realize the supports need removed, but I thought it looked really cool with all those supports in there.

Shawn's 3D Printed DRK-1
Using Savage's Plans

The short antenna is rounded on both ends for whatever reason. I wasn't sure if it was going to be very happy printing that way, but it seemed to do OK. (I think it's upside down here)

Shawn's 3D Printed DRK-1
Using Savage's Plans

In that picture you can also see that I tried several of them on their tops and also on their bottoms, trying to see which way printed better. I think printing with the posts down is better so that there's less cleaning of the exposed recesses. The shapes require support as they jump out pretty sharply.

Several of the parts are also very similar, so that should be interesting trying to figure out which is which when I get around to assembling it.

[kresty]

Prepped the body_sphere_front, but the back's not really possible. On the skinny side there's only one thin line on the bed, no way that print is going to succeed. On the wide side Savage made a nice pretty rim to connect the parts - which isn't going to work because it's rounded and won't have much to attach. I'm going to slice his pretty rim a bit 'til it's square and see what happens.

[savagecreature]

unfortunately it's going to take a fair amount of work for me to fix that. I'll try to do another version with a more printer friendly lip on it in the next day or so and get it out to you.

[kresty]

unfortunately it's going to take a fair amount of work for me to fix that. I'll try to do another version with a more printer friendly lip on it in the next day or so and get it out to you.

Thanks for the updated file!


That's exactly what I meant, though I confess it took me like 2 minutes in 3D Builder to chop off the rounded edge.  I hope it wasn't too painful.  I think yours is better though, retains more of the lip.

Fingers crossed I'll try to start the front half today.  Yesterday I learned that the Z18 doesn't like NTFS formatted USB sticks (duh), and then later that I have to *wait* after saving from Simplify 3D because it does it in two steps and converting the gcode to a z18 factory file takes a while.  So I need to be more patient.

[kresty]

This one was a little stringy too where I bridged too far.  If we split these "for real" here we should probably see about adding a built-in support for folks there.

Printed my last skid

As with the others, the halves fit together really well.

Printed my last skid

[kresty]

Finally got the front of the body sphere printing on the Z-18. Working great, though I'm not going to be able to pick up the print before Monday.

First attempt had file system on USB stick wrong, then had file format wrong (Simplify implied it was done, but it still needed to convert file formats and I was apparently impatient).

Next day I'd addressed that, but neglected to notice that the bottom of the model was kind of an unprintable shape with a thin line on the first layer and then the "real" bottom layer trying to print in the air.

Today I got the squared-off bottom on the printer and it's behaving well. I also changed the 1st layer settings to extrude more, slow down, and offset the z-index a bit. (Probably overkill, but sticking is way better than jamming one of the $200 "smart" extruders).

Hopefully it'll get done and I can print the rear on Monday. Front says it's a 9 1/2 hour print. Rear is over 11 - and that's not including the 10-15 minute heating time.

[kresty]

Printed the front half of the body...

DRK-1 Front Hemisphere
Z18 PLA, from Savage's plans

The inside is stringier than I'd like, particularly near the top. Not sure if the print speed was too high or it wasn't hot enough or what. Other printers I've used would've done that angle... Though this is larger diameter than I typically do.

DRK-1 Front Hemisphere
Z18 PLA, from Savage's plans

The back half is now on the printer, along with a couple of the other remaining parts.

[kresty]

Ok, I'm not terribly keen on the Makerbot Smart Extruders that are impossible to repair and cost you $200 if you mess up. But... it knew that it ran out of filament, and I was able to continue the print.

(I know, you can hardly tell)

Printed OK even after running out.

There's a slight ridge where the colors change. I'm guessing that either one of the axis steppers missed a step or there was something due to the cooling/reheating after it stopped and started later the next day.

As before, the inside was stringy, though it made it higher up the dome. I think this may be Simplify 3D trying to print this bit too fast. The overhang isn't really that sharp; every other printer I've used would've succeeded here. I think the angle's about the same as the other one though.

The print of the opening is also a tiny bit rough (no problem). I'm a little confused why the exterior details protrude into the model though, that meant extra support.

Stringy

The exterior details didn't do very well, even though I'd put support under them. For future builds it might be better to pull these out and print them separately, but I expect I'll just clean these up and go with it. A little annoying, but not as bad as taking a dozen hours and a bunch of filament.

DRK-1 Rear Detail not perfect

[kresty]

Savage was nagging me to post a picture of the body hemispheres stuck together. They didn't look like much by themselves, but I added a skid. This is just a dry fit.

Test fit some DRK-1 Parts

Skids seem like they're going to be tricky. The support slots are cool, but they're not parallel to each other, so they're tough to just slide in from the side. Since my skid's split, I shoved the front onto the front hemisphere, and then put the back skid in the back. And then tried to shove them all together. It was tricky to get them all into OK positions for this photo.

I imagine I'll be able to assemble it OK, but future revisions might want to look into a better way of doing this.

[savagecreature]

I guess I secretly knew that deal about the skid slots. While I was putting the model together I thought, "Is that gonna be difficult to get on there?" which was shortly followed by something along the lines of "I'm sure we can file it or something"

I'll put some time into making that join easier to put together

It's lookin' awesome, though