Building the C-Bot 3D printer: Part 27 : First ‘really big’ print

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Emboldened by the success on my previous ‘big print‘, I thought I’d go for a ‘really big print’:  Something that would really take up the whole build volume.  In Maya, I quickly modeled up a simple vase, sliced it in Simplify3D, and a few hours later, I had a… really big vase :)

Print specifics:

  • Size:  20″ tall, base diameter of 11″.  Could go an inch larger in each direction, but didn’t want to push it (yet).
  • Sliced in Simplify 3D, ‘vase mode’: 1 shell (plus no floor or roof, its a tube)
  • Gray PLA
  • 500 micron layer height, 1.0mm E3D Volcano nozzle
  • 250 deg extruder temp, 50 deg bed
  • Print bed:  Glass, slathered with wood-glue/water mix.
  • Print speed:  45mm/sec
  • Total print time:  3 hours, 9 minutes.  Adding a floor would have definitely pushed the time up.

Learnings:

  • I’m happy with the print quality, but I can see where the neck narrows how the filament isn’t being cooled enough (gets slightly lumpier compared to the larger base):  I have a pair of 20cfm fans on order to see if this helps:  My current fans are around 4cfm each, which isn’t nearly enough considering this machine easily pushes out 3x the volume of material compared to my Replicator1, at a higher temp.  And the cooling fan I have on my Rep1 has around 8cfm.
  • Once I bolt the printer down to the table it’s on, it should help lessen the vibration that comes from all that moving mass up on top, and get better quality.  On the todo list…
  • Even though I have all my stepper voltages tuned in, my Bowden extruder stepper was still getting pretty warm after about an hour, so I pointed a fan at it.  Didn’t want a repeat of before

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C-Bot 3D Printer: Resource Page
New 3d prints: More big vases on the c-bot
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