A 3D Labour of Love

This was a monster of a print. In 4 years of 3D printing, I’ve never had a part that tried my patience like this one did.

It’s not a long print in comparison to some that I’ve done but it’s just horrible on all sorts of other levels. It’s almost certainly the biggest print I’ve done at about 35mm tall, and it uses about 1.2kg of filament by the time it’s printed the support material.

The shape of the left and right edges means it needs support there. The indent in the top right corner needs support. And right at the very top is a bit that protrudes to hook it into place on the Kity 636 which needs support.

The problem was that the supports are inherently weak structures and unless you have your printer tuned then the slightest bit of over extrusion means that the nozzle catches the supports and knocks them over.

At a guess, I would say that this took around 15 attempts to get right. Some failed early on but at least 3 failed 20 or more hours into the print. It’s the closest I’ve come to admitting defeat.

The best bit is that I’ve got another one to print for someone else.