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I had a wooden one of those (and others) as a kid 😋

Time to do prepare some RC car parts testing... Nichimo Luminous chassis and gearboxes...

I do have about 2kg of PLA in rolls that I can't use in the AMS, I don't intend to respool them at this stage (but I may change mind later). In the meantime, I decided to use the red PLA on the spool support, without AMS.

Instead of doing one by one, I put all the key parts on the plate, set to make grid supports and let's have a quick print for this: all of this is about 5 hours print. On the E5P in its current configuration, I would not have taken the risk to put all parts together, and it's likely that the 2 gearboxes would have been about 6 hours each and the chassis about the same... So this is clear time gain when you want to do iterative work...


I laucnhed the print last night before going bed. PLA is very much safe as long as the bed is clean with glue, so I did only check the first few minutes of the first layer before going sleep.

And this morning, at breakfast time, I got a print done, with a time lapse...


Grid supports are a pain... They were super easy to remove with PETG prints, it doesn't seem to be the case here... I'll try other supports mode for next prints. If there is no way, I'll respool and use PETG as interface layer for the supports (but at this stage, i'm still lazy and not sure to respool this roll).


Next post will be on the Nichimo thread

impressive, thats a pretty good print time for all that!

yeah... I'm not even using the so called Sport an Ludicrous mode (125 and 150% speed). It's all printed in normal mode... And there might be a few optimisations I can do to get it printed quicker (on supports, for example) : the whole plate would have taken me a lot more to print with the E5P, and in addition, each print launch requires a bit of checks, so this is definitely a big time saver to validate parts...

After my last post, the heater for the resin printer arrived...


It was quickly installed in the resin printer chamber. The cable is going through the riser which is also providing a hole to pass the cable. And the riser is maintained in place with some double face tape.


Due to the time, I decided not to start any resin printing test today... This will be probably next week-end as I have everything ready now...

While awaiting the delivery, I laucnhed a very quick test : the green roll of PLA was almost depleted, and I wanted to know how the machine behaves when it is the end of the filament. Nothing better than to do this type of test on something which is not critical...


I printed almost two benchys with what was remaining in the spool. I was actually surprised, but when you think about it, there is about one meter between the roll and the printer head thru AMS, buffer and the tube that goes to the head... The behavior is the following : roll deplete in AMS, as soon as the first stage feeder is passed by the end of the filament, there is light anymore on the AMS port corresponding to the roll. The print continues until the end of the filament arrives at the filament runout sensor located just next to the hot end before the extruder. Once the end of filament is detected, the head goes in the awaiting position on top of the badword chute. You get an error message. I did not cleared the errore message, I put another roll of filament in, put the filament in the first stage sensor, then the end of the green filament was purged and print restarted... Simple and very limited user intervention (and the bed is maintained in its current temperature).

Here is the result : a bicolor benchy

 

(I remember my first filament run out on the E5P : I was not at home, I saw it once back. there was 20 minutes left on a 25 hours print. And basically, I did not know what to do, and the fact that the end of the filament was in the bowden tube did not help much as well. Print was failed due to this (and I'm not even talking about the heating : bed temperature was not maintained at run out of filament, which means the part could unstick by itself in some cases)...

There was a bit of printing activity this week... I remained silent because of no time to actually post about this...

I had actually to try to print rims. I chose the Samurai rim, as I love it


And here is the results



Only remain to find tires for those nice rims . And yes, if you think printing a Samurai chassis is not possible with a FDM printer, looking at the aspect of the surface that was on the supports : it's nice and clean! Using a support interface material that doesn't stick well to the printed material is the way to go... You may not be able to do intricated design without solvable material, but at the end it is question of geometry.

On the Printing lab area, I got some additional dfficulties and had to reprint some of the parts : the hinges were loose... and as a result the doors didn't stick, and one of them broke the hinge... Too bad, I don't have white PETG anymore, I launched a black print... In the meantime, here is how the enclosure looks without the doors.


Once this is finished, I'll be able to launch the resin tests...

Some time later...



There is plenty of room for the E5+ on first floor. I launched a print with the X1C in order to assess if ok or not on vibration side, and what I suspected is turning real : I'll have to get the X1C somewhere else. Beside, it's placed a bit too high, while the resin printer seems to be at the right height to be able to work standing. I still had to order a cabinet, I was hesitating between 40 and 60 cm deep. It will be 60cm deep, and the X1C will be inside. The Silhouette Cameo 4 will be positioned exactly where the X1C is currently... I'm waiting the FDM print to finish to launch my first resin print.

And it is now in progress... let's see in few hours...


I've tried to push all chances on my side : heating to ideal temp, following resin manufacturer recommendations, and so on... We'll see in few hours...

I crossed my fingers the whole afternoon... Unlike in FDM where you can see the progress from start to the end, in resin printing, you can't see anything until it reach a certain height... That's frustrating somehow... At least the sound of the FEP release everytime was clear, and let me thinking it was progressing...

About 6 hours print, and it seems it is sucessfull.



Still a lot of work, but at least it is out of the print stage... I let it drain before it goes to wash and cure...
I'll be able to share all the details later on. I believe that I can do most of the tires I modeled this way. I have a small doubt regarding the Big Bear tire as it is quite big, and the recommendation for the orientation can't be applied on my resin printer bed... I'll have to try for sure

A coors tires set for me please. It will be better than my old cournon 😜🙌👏👏👏👏