Update

Full scale test panel printed. 

Conclusions: 

Print time: 100 hours
Party immanent

1. FILAMENT EXTRUSION: The filament making process is to be avoided at all costs. It takes time, is prone to breaking which means the two hour spooling process must be restarted and any filament already spooled must be unwound, ground up (in a blender or another expensive machine) and recycled. Revycled filament blocks the extruder more often! This may be due to the fibre content variance.

Filament product sales to be explored. Team member needed for this.

1.1 Spools are too small so I am having to design a whole new spool mod to make larger spools otherwise they need to be constantly changed during the print, 4 x per day minimum. 

1.2 The 1.75 thickness of the biomaterials is hardly uniform from the extruder so either the filament snaps during printing and needs manual resetting which can delay printing (the machine pauses) untill one notices and manually resets the filament or the filament breaks while spooling so only small spools can be made or the spool needs to be recycled (in a domestic blender - now broken) or

1.3 it’s too thick which blocks the extruder which the machine does not recognise as a fault and keeps going but without laying material which leaves gaps in the print for as long as one doesn’t realise there has been a fault. This means constant monitoring. Solution is to use pellet extruder.

2. MACHINE PERFORMANCE: Bed levelling, problematic due to slide rod not sliding smoothly that was noticed to be clearly faulty during construction. 3D printer company avoiding responsibility for faulty part. They will send a new one.

2.1 Adding bricks to the corners of the print bed forces sticky sliders into lowest possible position and dampens the effect of these faulty slider rods.

2.2 It seems only possible to generate tool paths with the printer manufacturer’s custom software which makes constant use of the Z axis. However there is very limited scope for customisation as per Cura. Solution: organise Cura project file for this printer with Dowell.

2.3 50C bed and 260C extruder working perfectly off one normal domestic plug socket with a short extension cable. Cable and plugs quite cool to the touch. Other loads not to be placed on circuit.

3. MATERIALS: Material performance good at 245C. 20% Pond 80% UPM15. Extrusion temp for filament 180C

3.1 Lack of uniformity in filament diameter results in non-uniform bead thickness that effects porosity. Solution is to use pellet extruder & apply non-toxic wax based varnish finishing coat after sanding.

4. DESIGN: the design needs to be massively reduced in size and the print file needs 4mm thick walls without infill. Much lower flanges to save materials and time. This will be the next test panel.

4.1 Curvatures are the strongest faces of the component because of additional layers used where there are curves. Next prints will explore printing the panel at an angle.

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ToDo:

Raise funds for industrial printer we have designed that can print one panel in 2 hours not 4 days! Donate here or contact charles@create.green for investment opportunities.

Pellet extruder with thicker bead and flow rate needed (as per the design of our industrial scale printer £34,000 out of our budget). Buy off the shelf pellet extruder.

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Can the MD material conveyance system plug onto this gantry? Mail Tyler

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I should print the Egg Zome because the curves are strong and it’s a good visual sell. It’s also very extensible and can be built slowly in the dome. 

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Print EggLoo panels at an angle. Design support base, don’t use Cura auto supports (experiment with the two).

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Organise celebration

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