Project Planning and Optimising filament  

Project Planning and Optimising filament

So,

PLANNING:

Being relatively new to the realm of 3D printing (about 3 months), i decided to embark on a project that one of my friends asked about, as im suicidal and love frustration.  He wanted a shoulder set printed for a Darth vader costume he has made.  So to Thingiverse and found a model (note this is not a Thingiverse post, its a learning post),

First issue: scaling

Scaling is a wonderful feature, but it also scales the imperfections, so after increasing the dimensions to 500mm across it had the rendered consistency of a cheesegrater - it is amazing how much you can learn trying to fix things in meshmixer.  This can take a huge about of time to get right, but once learnt it will help you for many other projects, take the time to learn about the tools you have at your disposal, i'm by no means an expert in things like Meshmixer and F360, but if i see the same problem in the future, ill know what to try first.

Second issue: splitting

As you might have noticed, 500 wide is a little too large for a humble MK3S, so choppety chop chop and the model was separated into 4 pieces that I thought would fit

Third issue: fitting

Well, it turns out just splitting a model to make it 'fit' is not as easy as it sounds, throwing each portion in the slicer revealed, i would have to be a bit more careful about HOW i split the model, so back to meshmixer and F360

Fourth issue: fitting #2

So it fits on my bed, but only just, meh i think, no worries it'll print .... looks good, oh... i forgot the supports... oops.  Supports are great, they hold things up that hang in free air, my problem was using standard supports would exceed the size of the print bed and on two of the peices, to say that they fit, is calling it generous, there were only two orientations +/- 3/4 degrees that would be accepted

Fifth Issue: Support enforcers

These are AWESOME! and after multiple perumtations, and tweaks, i found a combination that would not only support the overhangs, but also fit the bed

Now ALL of this is done BEFORE I print anything, each of the four peices is checked and double checked to make sure it fits and will print, if i was to print one piece from the split model, it would be a complete waste of time and filament if i had to redo it

OPTIMISING FILAMENT

PrusaSilcer gives you an indication of how much filament you are going to use, this is exteremely valuable information, it is based on the size, settings, your inside leg measurement and a raft of other paramenters.  We now know two things

1.  how much filament im going to use
2.  how much filament you get on a roll

so in order to ensure for the 1 day 13hr print, for each of the back peices, I didnt run out of filament, i looked at the filmanet required to print each peice and by the power of addition worked out how to get the most of each roll

it turns out that each of the back peices, with supports, is about 480g each - well dang it, thats a roll!  The front peices come in at 280g each.  Im unsure, but im guessing each roll contains a minimum of 1kg filament (exluding the roll itself), do i take the chance that i can print one back and two front without the roll running out?  No, ill play it safe and print the two back peices on one roll and have the other pieces on the other.

Again, ALL of this is done BEFORE I print anything, each of the four peices is checked and double checked to make sure it fits and will print, if i was to print one piece from the split model, it would be a complete waste of time and filament if i had to redo it

Bottom line, careful planning, simulation and checking can greatly optimise what and how you print, saving you filament and, more importantly, time

Plan ahead and look at what you can do to make prints succeed first time!

P.