SLA 3D Printer Project Log 13: Paint with the colours of the Wickes

Oh dear...  It had to be crossed eventually...  This is a skillset I'll freely admit I have dishonourably neglected...  Painting.

For someone who is in a hobby all about making faithful recreations where razor-sharp details abound, I need some serious work on this skill, and what better place to begin than on a project that technically doesn't even require painting if the printer is kept indoors?  My original plan was to hang up the panels, spray them glorious, and have done with it; so far, it seems to be going well:

Apart from it resembling a grey-scale map of German Mottled Camouflage; economy or consistency?  The agony of choice...

I'm greatly enthused by the idea of spray-painting, if not because it's the only way my gibbon hands can get a decent coat down, it also has these goodies:

1.  More rapid application, also dries faster
2.  Cleaner in application, also leaves the work surface free from ghastly lumps of paint
3. Thinner coat means paint is less liable to be chipped off
4. Greater consistency is achievable with lower skill level
5. Minimal equipment is required – I probably should have hung the panels up with a wire but this isn't strictly necessary

All promising stuff, but alas it is tempered by these here bugbears:

1. Terrible with thin edges – you can either underspray the edge or overspray the sides, unless you have an adjustable airbrush or a spray can with multiple nozzles
2. Expensive per area covered – Standard outdoor paint cans promise 10m^2 per can while you'd be lucky to get 5m^2 out of the same money spent on spray paint
3. Solvents released to atmosphere, requires a well-ventilated area (or a shed full of panel gaps!)

Just to illustrate point 1, I have evidence of both cases, as if that's something to be proud of!

What is this “consistency” you speak of?  Do you think it'll ever catch on?

For the sake of comparison, by the way, I painted the rear panel with outdoor white satin paint (sans primer for speed reasons); am I so stoked by these results?  Short answer, no.  Long answer, very much no.

Too embarrassed to paint my Airfix models as a child, can you tell?

The worst part about such blobby edges is the fact that less is more when painting; specifically, the blobs are always the first paint to chip off.

The black lines are brush bristles, go me.

The coat does look thicker at least; don't worry, I was planning to drill the holes out from 4mm to 5mm anyway :)

Enough depressing spectacles of incompetence, here's a beautiful image of what happens when you immerse a stainless steel offcut rod (used as a paint stirrer) bathe in a tub of water and eco-turps:

Keep your skills high and your pomposity low...

SLA 3D Printer Project Log 12: Dropping the Hammer on lack of construction

You know that feeling when you've finally been liberated to make real progress on something?  In a sea of drudgery and busy-bodying in the real world, this is a shot of Dopamine straight to the brain.  This is even more so when you've been procrastinating something for so long that spiders the size of your big toe have set up ambush positions in your cooking utensils (as happened to me when I cleared out my shed; yes, my spine is Petri Jelly, no need to remind me...  *sigh*).

Nails, the classic solution for design ineptitude - that or excessive amounts of glue and filler!

The rush of finally taking action is, as we all know, the best time to find out we've been imbeciles – as I found out when I discovered my top vent had no tabs for locating the parts together!  I had basically expected the builder to be able to glue these together against gravity no matter which way up the join was being made.  Rest assured this will be fixed in the final 1.0 release, but for now, we can get busy with a Pin Vice (Check out the review here!).

If you think this is laborious, try correcting a hammer drill gone haywire...

As I examined the Z carriage to which the Build Bed is mounted to, I couldn't help but notice that there was a slight warp, a horrifying scenario for a part absolutely dependent on being straight and true!  At risk of making the Z carriage too heavy for the Stepper Motors, I knocked together a barn-door solution on a whim...  Unprofessionalism?  What is this, the Intel FABs?

Spare Extrusions fixed in place with Stud-Locked Nuts and Bolts; a nice solution, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned for strain on the Z motors.

Among the bits that I bought in a project-buying frenzy were some black, chunky tapes with a faint magnetic field.  These are for mounting the UV-Reactive Acrylic Window Panels.  TBH I'm a little worried about their powers of retention given that most ferrous things are barely attracted to them, but at least my Hard Disks are safe :)

Pro-Tip for those doing this:  Dampen the plywood surface where the ends of the tape meet, apply cyano, then affix.  Safeguard against peeling ;)

One final note is how we can expect the panels to be mounted; I've found some Slim T-Nuts for the extrusions that don't need to be slid in before the panel is aligned, so I can mount the panels after the frame is built – you can't imagine how much rage this will save!  On the downside, I've missed out on the chance to become the next Francis...

This thing locks against the extrusion when tightened, so no worries about it spinning in situ.

Locking in action, shouldn't too hard to remove them again.

Stay Productive...