So here are attached 3 pics of my biggest and most complicated print so far. The first is part way printing up the last chamber showing the support material, the second showing the support material in the process of being cut and smashed out, and the third one of the mostly assembled item.
It is a half size New South Wales 5 chime steam whistle ( it had to be Australian as that is where I am originally from ). The drawing for the bell took and about 8 hrs work to draw ( it is drawn full size and scaled down to print ), my original plan on how to draw it failed so I had to teach myself a work around to do what I wanted which took a bit of time. It then probably took about 5 -6 hours of working out how to use sic3r in detail to get the support material to work the way I wanted, plus I wasted 7 hrs of printing between 2 trials that went wrong before I got the final print pictured here. The bell is a bit over 5" high and is a bit over 3 1/4" diameter and the whole lot assembled is about 6 5/8" high.
Why print a steam whistle, well I am a steam nut, plus I have a steam whistle fetish and own a few genuine whistles, plus I thought this would be a great learning curve on how to drive the printer.
The bottom cup piece took about 3-4 hours to print ( cant actually remember properly as I didn't record how long it took ) and the top bell piece took 12 hrs 40 min to print, and then tool another hour and a half whilst I broke out all the support material, which was quite fun when I started getting into the longer chambers. Whilst the print is not perfect ( I had some layer shift and it is a bit coarser than I would have liked ) it has still come out pretty damn good and has proven what I can potentially achieve on the printer. The weirder the better!!!!
I still need to print the final piece that goes between the cup and the bell, then I will be able to actually blow the whistle on air and hear what it sounds like. If it sounds half reasonable the next step will be to design patterns, print them and then look to casting whistles properly in bronze. If and when I get the final bit sorted I will take a vid and see if I can post a link to youtube to view it.
Rowan.
It is a half size New South Wales 5 chime steam whistle ( it had to be Australian as that is where I am originally from ). The drawing for the bell took and about 8 hrs work to draw ( it is drawn full size and scaled down to print ), my original plan on how to draw it failed so I had to teach myself a work around to do what I wanted which took a bit of time. It then probably took about 5 -6 hours of working out how to use sic3r in detail to get the support material to work the way I wanted, plus I wasted 7 hrs of printing between 2 trials that went wrong before I got the final print pictured here. The bell is a bit over 5" high and is a bit over 3 1/4" diameter and the whole lot assembled is about 6 5/8" high.
Why print a steam whistle, well I am a steam nut, plus I have a steam whistle fetish and own a few genuine whistles, plus I thought this would be a great learning curve on how to drive the printer.
The bottom cup piece took about 3-4 hours to print ( cant actually remember properly as I didn't record how long it took ) and the top bell piece took 12 hrs 40 min to print, and then tool another hour and a half whilst I broke out all the support material, which was quite fun when I started getting into the longer chambers. Whilst the print is not perfect ( I had some layer shift and it is a bit coarser than I would have liked ) it has still come out pretty damn good and has proven what I can potentially achieve on the printer. The weirder the better!!!!
I still need to print the final piece that goes between the cup and the bell, then I will be able to actually blow the whistle on air and hear what it sounds like. If it sounds half reasonable the next step will be to design patterns, print them and then look to casting whistles properly in bronze. If and when I get the final bit sorted I will take a vid and see if I can post a link to youtube to view it.
Rowan.
