3D Printing - the future is now.

[CD Xbow]

I couldn't find a 3D printing thread so thought I'd start one. My friend, The Sugarman and I have a couple of 3D printers, a small Up Mini and a large Rostock. We have used them for many years and sadly the results often were poor and unreliable. Very hit and miss. We noticed a big jump in quality and reliability when we changed over to using Klipper running on a Raspberry pi as the controller. Here is a video of the Rostock printing a model and captured with time lapse video, it shoots an image every time the printer head returns to its starting point. The printing process probably took a number of hours.


View attachment timelapse_yoda_bust_abs-brim.gcode_20241219_0125.mp4

Looks pretty cool doesn't it?

Here's one that failed and made 'spaghetti', an all too common event with 3D printing. You can clearly see the model loses adhesion to the base and moves. Voila, instant pasta.


View attachment timelapse_tuning_tower_absp_240_5_timelapse.gcode_20241215_0140.mp4

Below is a picture of some dino feet that the Sugarman just printed. I'm using them as the bird feet for a garden sculpture of Ishtar/Lilith, which you can see in the background. This is not 3D printed, it's polystyrene sculpture covered by acrylic cement render. That's Boral cement render and after that plug I'm expecting a significant sponsorship deal from Mr Boral.

 

[CD Xbow]

Here are some older anatomical and paleo prints. These have all had significant surface works - jointing compound and acrylic paint. For an outdoor work you can replace the jointing compound with acrylic cement render. First an adult and kiddies hearts



These skulls are printed in 3 pieces and take about 80 hours of print time.



Last we have Lucy, a Trump supporter and antivaxxer