My first prints + stress test  

My first prints + stress test

I thought I would share my first few prints to add to the impressive gallery already here.

It seems standard practise to print off the PRUSA logo, but I also downloaded a couple other objects from Thingverse.

I was curious about the accuracy of the prints in all 3 axes and so a calibration cube seemed in order:

Calibration cube (20mm)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:214260

And once I seemed to have dialed in the sweet spot for the Z nozzle height I thought I would try a complex piece and since I liked the idea of having a useful desk object rather than a curio to gather dust I thought the Tower of Pi looked to be ideal. Not only would it stress test the printer it would also give me an idea of how much time it would take. I was a bit concerned about the speed so I dialled down the print speed on the Pi to 70%. Print time from SD card was almost 24 hours!

Tower of Pi
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:271769

For some reason I can't quite fathom, the Pi started printing ok, but then a few hours later when I checked it it seemed that one edge had compressed. I can tell this because the part where the numbers begin to print these are parrallel with the print bed (green arrow) but the part connected to the hotbed seems to have curled up and then compressed itself. I supervised it for the first 30 minutes to ensure the base was laying down correctly (earlier attempts due to Z height meant the nozzle sometimes clipped the previous layer and messed up the job). The bulk of the Pi printed ok though so it's still perfectly functional 🙂