The panel calibration I did helped. The buttons are much less out of registration. The Chinese said instructed me to disassemble the panel from the unit and reconnect it. If that doesn't work, they'll send a new one, but it will probably take about two weeks. Meanwhile it still prints well as long as your fingers touch the right spots.
Mark, you should take notes… Maybe I'll give you an assignment. Or you could periodically re-read the whole thread. I do occasionally just to remember all the stuff that I've done.
I'm getting better at the printing with the refinement of using the supports correctly. It's all about the combination of angle that the piece is situated and the type of the supports. I re-printed the engine block with total success. I put it at a 45 degree angle and used the "heavy" support setting. It didn't budge and all the surfaces were square and flat. I did some post-printing damage when I was a little rough in cutting off the thicker supports and took out a chunk on both sides of that thin lower rail. If I put this engine outside the building as a scrapper, then a rusted and damaged part will look just fine. Here it is in the finished position. This version was completely open in the middle it worked very well.
This shows the labyrinth of supports. Each one of those sticks is interconnected with all the other with angular webbing. The thing is quite strong. Going with the thicker supports eliminated separation and no warpage.
Lastly, here's the engine block with the supports gone. You can see that damage to that lower rail. There's similar damage on the other side. I'll be more careful next time. With each print I'm learning more and more about what you need to consider. So, you can't actually print anything. The last thing I attempted was just the fan assembly for the air conditioner. I was concerned about those cross guard bars being unsupported. After about an hour of printing I checked it and, sure enough, the print was failing since those bars were just hanging there, being unsupported.
I will print it without the bars and do them as a separate scratch-build activity with some brass wire through some drilled holes. Just because you can print something doesn't mean you have to print everything.
While the printer was humming away I did work on the engine house. First of all, when I have a 50/50 chance to get something wrong, the odds are 100% that I will. This time it was the roof stops I glued in yesterday. I forgot to check which side of the roof I was gluing them to. The roof was not symmetrical. I glued them to the top side. I had to rip them off with the plane iron, then use some spackle to fill the gouges made in one part. I re-measured and glued new strips to the correct side and tomorrow I'll sand the filler and it will be done.
I did decide to glue in the floor. I had to add some pieces to fill the gaps and then make some angle gussets to tie the floor to the flimsy front pieces. The last time I checked it, the floor structure is sound except for the terrible flexing in the middle of the mid pieces. These will be correctly supported when the building is on the layout since they nestle down next to the tracks. I may use some silicone adhesive in strategic locations to keep it nice and flat.
Here's a close up of the gussets holding the front wall to the floor. It really stiffened the front wall.
I ran into a slight problem from my corner braces. They interfered with the trusses. I trimmed the end trusses so they slipped over the corner brace. Can't see it, and now the roof fits perfectly and is removable.
To help the mid piece gussets dry properly I artificially raised those pieces so they didn't torque the glue joint. With the glued floor, the walls no longer flex. It's heavy and I have to be careful carrying it from the layout area to the shop.
I bought my own roll of Glad Press-n-Seal which I'm going to use to mask the windows from the inside. I can then spray the outsides without wrecking the interior paint. I chose to buy my own roll instead of using the kitchen roll for obvious reasons. It's going to be very hot and humid for the next couple of days and since I have to paint outside, it may delay construction. I have a few more windows to construct, and I'm slowly going to print the stacks, AC units and machines for the shop. At the speed the printer works, I have to print parts when I'm not in the shop. Once I'm sure about how to do it without failures, I can start a print in the eventing and get the job in the morning. Doing it this way, you can do three to four prints a day depending on the time to print.
I'm beginning to understand why you orient the 3D part at 45 degrees. In addition to adding strength to thin parts, it minimizes the attachment stresses on the teflon bottom sheet. My AC print yesterday failed for two reasons, I didn't use strong enough supports and had it horizontal. When the almost 4" long and 2" wide flat surface attempted to pull off the bottom, the supports didn't have a chance. When I was asking Walt Gillespie at Rusty Stumps to print the appliances he was giving me some resistance saying that he had to redraw them and they all needed supports. I didn't know what he was talking about. I really didn't understand how the process worked. I didn't realize that the forming part had to be consistently tied to the platen so it could be raised enough to build the next layer. I now know.
