That’s not a rook. That’s a rook!
Hey guys,
Firstly, I hereby apologise profusely to Australia for my terrible impression.
Secondly, my apologies for my terrible Crocodile Dundee reference.
This week it’s a very quick video for you guys, answering the many requests I’ve had to do a
large print on the Phrozen Sonic Mega 8K. I wanted to do a classic Rook test print,
but everything didn’t go swimmingly as you’ll soon see.
I downloaded this test Rook from Thingiverse but as this is in part a torture test,
I knew there was no way overhangs etc would print over thse large areas
so I modified the print by hollowing out the stairs and helix.
This will also lightened the load a little. I expanded the stl to the maximum width of
the plate which gave me a tall print, but not the full height that the Mega can do.
Once ready, I immediately had a few problems with failed prints and it turned out on the other side
of the world at exactly the same time, Angus at Makers Muse was experiencing similar difficulties.
In both cases it turned out to be a temperature issue.
When I did my Sonic Mega review, we were having a warm spell here in the UK. This didn’t last
long which is typical for British summers, so ambient temperatures in my workshop have since
been quite low, roughly 16C or so. A brief chat with Phrozen confirmed for me that mid-twenties
is a much better printing temperature, which would normally be impractical for me.
Well, British weather took a turn for the positive a few days ago and I was able to try again,
but it’s worth noting… if you want to reliably run a large printer like this,
a heated enclosure may well be required. And thanks to failed prints, once successful
printing started, it because obvious that I didn’t have enough of this Aqua Ivory to finish the job,
so I had to switch to Aqua Grey. But remember, this print uses a little over half a bottle of
resin and takes more than 30 hours to print. But eventually my biggest unsupported
print to date was finished. The problem is, I wasn’t equipped to handle it.
I placed the heavy wet print inside a large cardboard box and set about blasting away some
of the excess resin with this airbrush. Whilst this technique works great on smaller prints,
on something this big, a full-sized compressor would work much better.
With that done, I didn’t have enough IPA to fill a bucket, so I opted to spray IPA
liberally all over instead, following this with more air blasting. And trust me, a mask
or better yet a respirator are a must for this. After repeating these steps a number of times,
I wrestled the print from the plate, which took a little brute force.
Fortunately, I have the Anycubic Wash and Cure Plus, so curing wasn’t an issue, though on a
taller print I would have probably reverted to simple daylight, which works even on cloudy days.
To hide the colour differences, I decided to spray a little
Citadel Mechanicus Grey using this as a primer. For the most part I’m thrilled with this massive
print. There’s just the slightest fault here which could be down to temperature fluctuations,
but it happens to coincide almost perfectly with the initial resin colour change,
so that’s likely my fault for not stirring thoroughly.
However, whether big or small, the Sonic Mega did an incredible job.
Just remember, if you’re planning on a printer this big, then you’ll need to plan
properlyyou’re your cleaning and curing, which I certainly didn’t.
So I hope you enjoyed this quick one guys. Take care and thanks for watching.