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king derelict

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  1. king derelict
    Thanks mark I'm trying to document my learning experience and solutions as I find them but I'm trying not to get too bogged down in it and become repetative. Alan
  2. king derelict
    Thanks Craig These printers really are sensitive to the print head height. An eighth of a turn on the adjusting screws makes a huge difference in print behaviour. I don't know how much a turn of the screw changes the height but its in thousandths of an inch I suspect. I checked the rollers and guides for excess play and the belt tension and it seems good. That is the worry - that there is some as yet undiscovered variable in the machine that has me chasing my tail - or waving my arms about 😄
  3. king derelict
    Lovely PE work Alan
  4. king derelict
    Hi Mark I think I am guilty of using poor terminology. Its really bed alignment rather than absolute level. It is about calibrating to get the print head to move completely parallel to the bed and the correct distance above the plate at all points. So when it lays down the first layer the distance between between the nozzle and the bed surface is close enough to press the filament down enough to stick to the plate but not too close where it will bulldoze the filament around the plate or skip parts of the layer. There are adjusting screws at each corner of the plate to move it up and down and in general a piece of paper is used as a feeler gauge to check the level between nozzle and plate at each corner looking for light drag as evidence of contact between nozzle and bed. Its a bit like using a micrometer. You are looking for enough drag to indicate good contact but not a hard clamp. I have been using a levelling print routine which prints a three layer ring around the edges of the bed and a square at each corner. The appearance of the print tells you where to adjust to improve the result. I like it because I can watch the first layer print and determine where a change is needed. I suspect I may be making the experienced printers wince with this but I find it seems to work better for me than the paper feeler gauge. It is possible though that it is only getting me close and I need to get better so developing skill with the feeler method may be the better long term solution. It seems that print speed, nozzle temperature, bed temperature and nozzle alignment (levelling) are the basic knobs you can turn to affect the final print - and that seems an overwhelming series of options when you are new to the technology. Of course as with every important topic the internet is full of opposing theories with something new to try. At the moment the corner brims seem to work well. I did pick up some stick glue and hair spray but haven't tried them yet. Thanks for the interest and help. Excuse my poor skills at written explanation; I do much better when i can wave my hands around Alan
  5. king derelict
    Hi; I'm using Overture PLA filament and the cooling fan is on for the first layer. Do you think I should change that in Cura? The corner brims are a plug in to Cura and are a little strange. They are supposed to print as a solid single layer disc. However i find that depending on the size of the corner brim there is often a section that is just a grid of filament. Maybe its something to do with my version of Cura versus what the plug in was written for. The corner brim on the left is intended to be smaller than the one adjacent to it because I was running out of room on the plate. I will recheck the bed level; it has been holding up in recent days but may be out a little again. Many Thanks for your help; I feel a bit out of my depth with the details of printing. Alan
  6. king derelict
    I returned to the completed hull after letting the epoxy cure for 24 hours. This time there was very little need for any serious viciousness and more a case of adding putty to the remaining gaps. With the over spread of the putty it looks worse than it is. Most of this will scrape or sand off Most of the joins really only needed a touch of putty The printer has been working away too. I re-sliced the aft deck files to add the corner brims and reprinted the section I deck. Compared to the previous days version (at left) it is a much nicer print. Its still not an infallible solution. For some reason on the current work in progress (deck H) it failed to print the corner brim at the bottom right corner even though it is present in the gcode file preview and you can see the skirt has made an allowance for it. I also don't understand why the printer occasionally missed sections of the layer as seen in this photo. Its all a black art still! I am using the book Flower Class Corvettes as a reference to select a suitable candidate for the model. The extended forecastle means it will be a later corvette although earlier ships were refitted. The mast aft of the bridge also is a feature of a later vessel but the lack of aft Oerlikons means its not a really late one. I would like some wooden decks which tend to disappear in the late builds so I'm looking somewhere in mid war period I think. I need to print a lot more parts to see what I have and what can be changed (is it possible to move the mast forward of the bridge?) before making a decision). Plenty of time really. Next objective is to finish the deck parts and sort out wood planks for the deck sections that need it and some plastic strips for shims and levelling then an order to those nice people at Sprue Brothers. Thanks for looking in Alan
  7. king derelict
    Thank you Yves You set a high standard to follow but I'm doing my best. The forecastle decks will move forward a bit; there are some loose strands of filament on the bow section where the print was trying to print the fore deck in mid air and it took a few passes to establish a fused piece. I think it might just about work out. I am still getting warping with a bed temperature of 60C. Very frustrating but the mouse ears at the corners are helping a lot. Thanks again for all the help Alan
  8. king derelict
    The beast is back together again! I made the last two joins today and it is now sitting to cure fully before adding a little putty and tidying up the hull before priming. Sorry for the ad-hoc photos but this thing is a challenge to place somewhere to photograph so the backgrounds may be more interesting than the model at some points. I added some of the deck pieces to check out how they are progressing. As I hoped the joins are better this time so much less putty and fettling will be needed this time. Then a first coat of primer and we shall see what we have. I'm still printing deck pieces. I got over confident after reading several articles about preventing warped parts but I am having mixed success. Several articles blamed having too hot a build plate after the initial layer so I have reduced the build plate temperature to 60C from my previous standard of 65C. I have also slowed down the print speed. Adhesion to the build plate is still good but the warping is still present. I got a couple of nice prints but the stern most deck piece is horrible even after a dip in hot water and manually flattening it. I think the distortion is too great. I have the next piece printing (section J) with an initial bed temperature of 60C and then reducing to 55C and it is starting to warp at the corners too. The on-line community has mixed views on the cures for warping so I may be going in the wrong direction with this. I think I will go back to adding the corner brims for the next piece. I'm finding the lack of consistency to be the frustrating part of this project. especially as repeating a bad part might take hours. It was meant to be a learning experience but sometimes I would prefer to not have to learn it all the hard way. Thanks for looking in Alan
  9. king derelict
    Thanks Lou Wow that guy has quite a launch technique. I don't think we will be trying his structural test - unless it is done by the smaller sister of my cats. I think the MEK or Acetone route may give a stronger join but the fumes scare me a bit. Alan
  10. king derelict
    Agreed; the attention to detail on the faces is really paying off Alan
  11. king derelict
    The recovery continues. The stern sections are back together and although still not perfect the gaps at the joints are much improved. A little putty should result in a reasonable finish. I switch to BSI slow cure epoxy and I am letting it cure as long as possible before moving on to the next section. I should be able to mate the two hull halves tomorrow morning and then leave for twenty four hours before puttying and fairing the joints. In the meantime I am continuing with printing the deck pieces. The bed still shifts a little as time goes by. I got several deck pieces completed but it tripped up over this piece, Section E, and I had to run the levelling print and adjust a couple of the corners a touch. The second attempt is shown. The BENWORX logo caused problems with adhesion to the bed in the first print. The deck piece was too big to add corner brims and unfortunately the top right corner is lifting. I'm hoping a bit of hot water will flatten it out post printing. I am not sure of the purpose of several of the deck pieces and its not obvious looking at the instructions. One of the pieces, the deck dagger plate doesn't look like the piece in the instructions so maybe its changed in the course of development. I ran a trial of priming methods on some scrap pieces. Three thin coats of gesso, Rustoleum automotive primer and Mr Surfacer. The Rustoleum primer looks like the best result so I plan to go with that unless anyone has an insight that would make it a bad idea. I had a quick look on the web and couldn't find anything to suggest that it would react with the PLA and result in damage. Thanks for looking in and thank you all for the support Alan
  12. king derelict
    Thanks Craig I roughed up the mating surfaces as I was cleaning out the old epoxy so it should be better this time round. Alan
  13. king derelict
    Thanks Yves; its a definite improvement and tidier to apply too Alan
  14. king derelict
    Thanks Lou I think that's a valid point. The slow cure I am now using is much thinner too and its easier to press the parts together and get a tighter join and also spread the glue over the whole surface. The thirty minute working time is optimistic - more like ten minutes. So far its working well Alan
  15. king derelict
    Craig Thats very, very nice. Its definitely worth putting PE on something like that. The moulded detail would very be as good. Railings and girders really pop in PE. Alan
  16. king derelict
    Thanks for the information Lou That looks like a good candidate. I just changed to the BSI slow cure 30 Minute Epoxy | Slow-Cure (bsi-inc.com) Alan
  17. king derelict
    Looking at the sections where the epoxy failed I didn't do a good job of running a continuous seam of glue around the connector. I'm being a bit more careful during the reassembly. I've also upgraded to a stronger epoxy. I actually got it because it has a longer working time. The fifteen minute epoxy I was using was setting up in under ten minutes maybe because the house is warm. I extensively clamp the first hull section to the connector on the first side of each section. The second side is harder and I can only get a couple of the clamps into place. So far that has seemed to be enough to maintain the shape Thanks for the helpful input. This is a whole new way of working for me Alan
  18. king derelict
    Thanks OC I think its going to work out okay and it is giving me an opportunity to improve the gaps at the joints. The hull connectors provide an overlapping strip across each joint in the hull sections. To be fair I was being quite rough with the hull and I expected to find I had broken something serious. In "normal" usage I think the epoxy will be fine. Thanks Alan
  19. king derelict
    Oh wot a smashin' Sunday! I was working on tidying up one of the worst joints in the hull at the mid section and was getting a bit medieval with the chisel forgetting that the hull wasn't really supported properly along its length. There was a very nasty cracking sound and a clatter and >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Picking up the pieces it showed that the joints had failed at the epoxy glue. All the PLA parts were fine except for the dodgy ledges for the deck in section 7 which had now detached extensively. I completely separated the partly debonded elements of the aft half and started cleaning up the pieces. The epoxy had done a reasonable job of gluing the sections; I should not have got so carried away. While I am cleaning the old epoxy off I am also using the plastic chisels to work on the joint edges (which is actually easier section by section) and dry fitting frequently to check the progress. I think it will be possible to get a closer fit second time round and then only have minimal clean up once assembled. This should prevent further brutalising of the assembled hull and we can return to some progress, Two more deck sections have been printed in amongst the days activities. Thanks for stopping by Alan
  20. king derelict
    I'm preheating to 65C and printing at 63C. maybe that's a little too warm but I got to those values while suffering from bed adhesion problems. Maybe I am running it too hot. Thanks for the suggestion. Alan
  21. king derelict
    Some delicate stuff there
  22. king derelict
    The courtyard now looks very realistic; worn and dirty. Excellent job. A few tufts of weeds here and there, the corners and edge of the duck pond might be in order to break up the rigid stonework. I saw an engraving on line of La Haye Sainte supposedly done just after the battle. It showed a tree in the courtyard but it also didn't show an trace of the loopholes in the walls so it may be suspect. Its looking great Alan
  23. king derelict
    In amongst the Saturday errands I started cleaning up the joints in the hull. As stated earlier the PLA plastic is not nice to work with. I found the best tool so far to trim the remains of the brim and fair the two sides of the joint is a set of MicroMark plastic chisels. They are nice and sharp (so far) and shave the PLA off quite well. It still requires a lot of effort but it is possible to get a neat result. I'm working this in short sessions as I'm finding it easy to get a bit frustrated and careless. I started adding the Vallejo filler to the gaps as I work along the hull. The chisels, scraper and the edge of a scalpel blade are being used As you can see this hull is challenging my work space and may need to be moved to the work bench in the garage The first two deck pieces have been printed and the third one is in progress I added the corner brims to stop the decks attempting to warp or curl upwards. This is available as a plug in to Cura downloaded from the Marketplace option in the program. It adds the circles seen at each corner and stops the corners lifting. It reduces material use and time as well as after print clean up when you don't need a full print. This explains it all Some of the options are different in my version of Cura but it is essentially the same and seems to work well. I may try to work a 1/700 ship as light relief between sessions on the corvette. I'm not sure how that will work out. I may just print parts for a few weeks and build when Florida cools down a bit and the garage becomes a reasonable environment again. I had initially thought of building this as the fictional Compass Rose (from the book The Cruel Sea of course) but she was an early corvette and this looks like a later version. Plenty of time for decisions. Now I need to order more filament. Thanks for looking and helping. Alan
  24. king derelict
    Thanks for the very helpful input from everyone regarding priming the hull. I already have gesso (Liquitex) from a previous project and I will get some automotive primer and run some tests on bits of print samples. I have put two layers of thinned gesso on one piece. The first layer was actually too thin and almost ran off the piece. The second layer is closer to the 25% water mix and is drying nicely without brush marks. Thanks for all the useful comments Alan
  25. king derelict
    Thanks OC. She is the timid one of the pair. She is probably worrying about being launched out onto the lake in the hull for sea trials - and the alligator Alan

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