Thank you! Yes… I get a lot back from all the folks who've been following this over the years compared to what I put it. It's a wonderful community of which we're a part.
Working again on the laptop doing some more detail design work. First up is a park bench. I found a nicely drawn one on the SU 3D Warehouse, but as you can see in this image, it is not printable. Everything you see in orange is a reversed face and therefore, not recognizable by the STL file converter and the ChiTuBox slicing software. If the software can't recognize a surface, the printer won't either. Furthermore, some of the objects in the fancy work were not solid objects and wouldn't print for that reason either. I had to do some extensive editing to fix it. The edited one is on the left and has no orange spots anywhere. I also added ends to the bench slats so they could be printed independently without any supports. I'm printing as much directly on the plate as I can.
Here's how they're arranged on the build plate. I'm printing them four-up. I'm going to need at least two of them, and I know they all won't be perfect. In order to print the end frames on the plate, I had to make sure that the frame backs were solid and perfectly flat so they would adhere properly during the print. We'll see...
Next up is the memorial signage. I'm printing this with raised lettering so it can simulate a bronze plaque. Again, I'm printing them four-up. I'm going to put two signs in: one facing the town and the other the aisle. You're not going to easily be able to view the sign facing the town. SU lets you do 3D lettering quite easily in many fonts.
And here's how it's going on the machine. The signs and the Heritage Park Banner will each take about 15 minutes to print. The bench will take over 3 hours. Remember: print time is directly related to three factors: how tall the object is (i.e., how many layers), how thick is each layer, and the exposure time of each layer. The number of objects being printed simultaneously has no effect on print time. In a FDM machine, there is no exposure time, so that doesn't affect print time, but the number and size of the object does contribute to print time. In the LCD machine, the entire build plate is exposed at the same time. By splitting the sign and frame I was able to print it flat. If I printed it as an assembly, the framing would have caused a problem since a large surface area would have been unsupported. I would had had to use supports. Splitting it eliminated all supports.
These will all be printed on Monday. Happy weird Super Bowl.
