Clver ideas for glow in the dark filament  

RE: Clver ideas for glow in the dark filament

Hi Rob,

I don't have any experience with this particular material but have you considered printing a separate '2' in black PLA to insert into the '2' cutout. You could either make it flush or raised above the surface of the disc.

Cheers,

Tim

RE:

Thanks for the ide, something like this?

I have tried printing the number itself but its simply too small, so printing the inverse might work.

Just doing it now to try it out 🙂 I've made the number disk slightly smaller in diameter so it will simply slot in the glow in the dark disk.

RE: Clver ideas for glow in the dark filament

It is a bit difficult to get an idea of the scale - what is the diameter of the disc?

If I understand the above correctly, this will be an opaque disc with a '2' cutout that will clip onto the front of the glowing disc. The '2' will therefore be illuminated by the glow of the disk coming through the cutout, right?

Tim

RE: Clver ideas for glow in the dark filament

Hi,

The disc is 31mm or so.

Thanks

Rob

RE: Clver ideas for glow in the dark filament

OK...so scaling from the image above, that would put the stroke width of the '2' around 2.5mm wide. You can definitely print letters that small as I have done it to infill the writing on the MK3S+ LCD panel.

That said, why not beef up the font weight a bit to get a wider stroke which may also help with contrast on glowing disc.

Cheers,

Tim

The underlying constraint is that at low lighting intensity human eyes don't focus and discriminate well.  You might do slightly better if the text itself were the glowing component...

Filling the slot with sealable wax by melting it, very difficult, and poor results,

You might find modelling putty easier to work.

Painting the slot with a black permanent marker, didn't look very good and more like kids drawing on the wall.

First use varnish to seal the 'grain' and prevent wicking.  Enamel paint (Humbrol or similar) is better.

I don't have a MMU2S extension to print multiple colours, and don't want to change filament so wondered if anybody had any clever ideas about how to make the number stand out.

You can get this down to just two filament changes by making the text part exactly two extrusion layers thick.

See: https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/prusaslicer/manual-multicolor/

https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk3s-mk3-how-do-i-print-this-printing-help/acting-as-my-own-mmu

Cheerio,

RE: Clever ideas for glow in the dark filament

The size of the numbers is limited. The aim of this is to make end cap covers for the eyepieces that I use for my telescope. Each eyepiece has a different number associated with it, e.g. from 2mm to 40mm. Basically you divide the focal length by this number to get the magnification.

For the moon, you would use a very low magnification, so with a 800mm focal length telescope, a 2mm eyepiece would give 400x magnification, whereas a 40mm eyepiece would give a 20x magnification. To be honest, even 20x is too much and 5-10x might be a lot better.

Anyway some of teh endcaps will have two numbers on, the latest is 40 (for a 40mm eyepiece), so I'm limited in the size I can print as the end caps need be a certain maximum size.

I'm printing numbers as black (or rather red as thats on one the prusa's) and I'll bring the GITD filament with a 2mm recess to see if that works any better.

The previus point og how the responds to this is 100% correct as well. There well be not a very good solution, but an average one.

OK, thinking out of the box:

Continue to print in GitD for easy location but forget visible markings and instead code tactile marks onto the surface or around the edge.

Cheerio,

RE: Clever ideas for glow in the dark filament

Interesting, sort of like Braille but simpler. I'll think about a pattern that might work.

I am still checking out printing a separate number in a different colour and embedding it into the GITD. Problem is that the GITD filament doesn't print the same as the PLA does. So if I print the number and the embossed disc in ordinary PLA, the number nicely slots in. If I print the disc in GITD, the numbers don't fit in as the embossed slot isn't as sharp. GITD is a pain in the butt to be honest 🙂

I will get there, thanks for the input from all 🙂

RE: Clver ideas for glow in the dark filament

I've found what might have been a major issue with the idea of putting different coloured numbers in the glow in the dark filament.

The PLA GITD filament doesn't print the same way as the standard PLA. It oozes more (not the best technical term), so slots for numbers that are supposed to 0.5mm wide are actually about 0.2mm wide. I have to print the sodding filament at 240C and it just oozes more. The PLA is a lot better.

But I have found the solution, I use Fusion 360 for design work, and I can make the numbers I use to to cut the slots slightly larger using offsets. This is NOT the same as using a larger font. If I add 0.4mm offset around all the edges and take off 0.4mm inside for things like 'O', it cuts the slots larger. I then print the numbers in PLA at the correct size and they just slot in nicely. The green line in the '4' is the original and the black like is the offset.

It now looks very professional, the picture doesn't do it justice to be honest.

I'm happy with that, as I can see a way forward to doing this.

Thanks for all the help.

Rob