The Cubbies : Part 4 Too Close to the Sun

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 This week I began my large format print of the cubbies. This print was set up with a brim and 0 infill. Unfortunately, around 25 hours the print failed as pictured below. 



As you can see in the photo, the print deformed on the sides that stretched the longest without any bend

Obviously the long sides of the print have less structure then the shorter edges. I like to think that if it had infill this wouldn't be the case but who knows. Because this print failed I had to reconsider all of my options. 

There was probably around 1200g of PLA used in this attempt, leaving me with too little to print another full size.

I want to do a test print of the long side with infill to see if the structure will hold, but I don't want to use my PLA as I don't have enough for a test and full print. I want to use the black or white PLA at school but I'm told different PLA gets different results so I guess that makes it pointless?

I am left thinking I flew to close to the sun. I'm going to take a step back and print a smaller version that can prove my concept and gain me a win in the process. Then later on I can attempt the full scale version once more.   


As a nod to my original inspiration of taking full advantage of the printing bed on the large format printer, I scaled the cubbies to fill the entity of the prusa mini printing bed. These were printed with a grid infill of 5%.


I printed all 3 of these at the same time, that means I was utilizing the 3 Prusa minis that were left standing from the semester. There were issues with the first layer sticking to the print bed for the orange and deep blue cubbies. I was in on a Saturday, and with no one else in the Thing Tank, I jumped on YouTube and watch a couple videos on calibrating the z axis. 4 Hours, a handful of calibrations and at least 6 failed attempts later I managed to lock in the orange and purple cubbies and left for the 16 hr print to work over night.

I'm so glad to say these prints were a success. The infill made a huge difference. I think that even if the original large print was a success, the piece would have still been too flimsy without infill. The walls would bend together and it would have been springy because of the curvy design. I'm pretty happy with these despite scaling them down. I feel confident that I could continue towards a full scale version with more materials for testing and the machine resources.

As a refinement to the design I would reduce the tolerance of the joint. For this scale the tolerance is probably around .3mm or so. I think because of the ribbed walls, the design needs little to now tolerance as the curves fall into each other when stacked.      






Thank you for a wonderful last semester.


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