The hours grow short until Botacon Zero.
I am determined to have a fully printed chess set before Botacon so that I can play12 at least one game. I’ve been tracking my heat/speed/etc settings in PLA but it is a time consuming process. It just holds its heat so long that small lower layers stay molten and gooey too long. The only reasonable option that I can foresee is dialing in my settings for PLA so that it prints at slightly cooler temperatures and far more slowly than I am printing right now. However, between work, blogging, holidays, and other sundry obligations I don’t think I’m going to have time to fully dial in my MakerBot for printing small parts in PLA.
I spent most of my free time this weekend cranking out parts. I printed up two more key fobs, all the non-pawn pieces for the second half of the chess set, and a really large number of experiments/tests/proofs of concept/nascent ideas.
PLA, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, has been a lot of fun. I get to run a robot making things, mostly toys or toy components, that smells like cotton candy, without warping. The downside, as I’ve mentioned above, is that it doesn’t work nearly as well for small parts. Last night I printed the tallest objects I’ve ever attempted – a 10cm cylinder and another 10cm model. 3
This is the long way of saying… I’m bringing a printed chess set to Botacon. The clear PLA side may be droopy and melty looking, but by god you’ll see it there. I’ve actually got way more than enough melty looking pawns to call this set done. 4 I’ll probably just come back and print the clear pieces again once I get PLA dialed in. 5
Default Series Title- And, by play, I mean lose graciously. [↩]
- And, by graciously, I mean to say that upon not winning I will smash every piece to bits and yell something along the lines of “I MADE YOU!!! WHY WILL YOU NOT DO MY BIDDING AND STRIKE HIM DOWN!?!” [↩]
- I’ll upload it shortly. [↩]
- So, maybe I am? [↩]
- If that happens [↩]