Printed Fabric - 23rd Oct -> 6th Nov

How about this for a challenge!
It's the amazing printed fabric by the extremely talented prettysmallthings


Image by prettysmallthings - thingiverse

Edit - Just spotted I didn't actually link to the Object - Here it is -

I have always wanted to get really good looking printed 'chain-mail' and this printed 'fabric' looks awesome.

I have not yet printed this myself, so I'm expecting some trouble and issues before I get a good print, I'm also expecting that I may even need to change the Marlin firmware as I have some aggressive settings in for my current printer.

Rules are simple - Print it how you like, just state if it's smaller, bigger or altered in any way than the original.
Describe your setup and if you needed to do anything differently to get the print to work.

Major bonus points if you attempt this with a 'rubber' plastic (soft PLA for example)

If this looks easy for you and you have a printer that can do it without any problem whatsoever, then make something 'new' with this printed 'fabric'
It's getting cold so maybe you could make a Scarf? Hat! or even a Thneed

If you do that and publish it, you will be regarded as a RepRap hero and probably win the competition!

Good luck and if you try a print, post details here even if it's a failure, hopefully we can all learn some new tricks.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2012 03:16PM by richrap.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

does anyone know if any US distributors carry soft PLA?
I printed a blue clutch and my advise is make sure the bed is perfectly level!

I sliced it with Kisslicer in about 15 minutes when i printed it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2012 08:18AM by Gulf.

Is it OK to try "parent" [www.thingiverse.com] or "cousins" [www.thingiverse.com] ?

@Gulf - Sorry I don't - in fact the only place I do know is GRRF in Germany. I Hope someone will try it.

@tertzoid - Yes,no problem, try them all. I had limited success trying to print the original chain mail when it first came out, but I had a very different printer then...

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

heheh

Everybody needs a Thneed .

Its a fine thing that all people need!

and now you can save the trees and print one

couldnt resist!

i got some Glacial Blue pla i need to use up to clear a spool

if i have time in the morning might set it to print and hopefully come back to a suprise after work

Enlightx Wrote:
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> if i have time in the morning might set it to
> print and hopefully come back to a suprise after
> work

Did you slice it yet?

I had to make the model a little smaller to fit on the 200x200 platform of the smaller MendelMax and Sliced it last night with Slic3r 0.9.1 - It managed to do it with one warning about self intersecting faces - slice time was 2hours 5mins! (0.2mm layers) - the Gcode looks good, so I'll try the print tonight if the settings were correct and it's not trying to print too fast.

I should have sliced and printed the fabric test sample first, that should slice in just a few seconds, so before I set off a big print, I will refine the settings first.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

I tried [www.thingiverse.com] 5x5 with Slic3r 0.9.3. one 2x2 chain corner was sliced differently ("double fibers"). It printed out with clear PLA (sorry no pics yet) partly well, but chains were melted with eachother (no fan) . Somewhat fexible output anyway.
Next I'm going to try make thin "fibery" grid using that melting as advantage: -)
like #########

Quote
richrap
Major bonus points if you attempt this with a 'rubber' plastic (soft PLA for example)

Would love to try printing this using my soft PLA from the GRRF but I leave for Hawaii tomorrow morning and just don't have time. Maybe when I get back...

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

rhmorrison Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Would love to try printing this using my soft PLA
> from the GRRF but I leave for Hawaii tomorrow
> morning and just don't have time. Maybe when I
> get back...

Well I guess that's a good enough excuse! Have fun in Hawaii, we may have mastered it by the time you get back

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

well had a look at this late last night.

Didnt fit on my bed (prusa I2) and didnt want to shrink it down as the parts are already silly small.

Sliced it at 60mm/sec and 20mm/sec bridges took i would say 15 mins to slice i think

THINGIVERSE 33054

cut it down to a nice printable sqaure which could then be used as truly fabric (i DARE someone to make a tshirt)

Got up for work this morning and set it printing before i left at 7:30 AM and just hoped for the best

got in from work and its come out really really good. dont know how long the print took as it was running from SD Card.

little tip : use water down PVA for your heated bed when using PLA Plastic. Then after the print has finished let the glass cool and remove take down to a sink and cover with soapy water. this will melt the PVA and lift the print very very easy.

I took a quick video to show you guys as a picture does not do it justice

YOUTUBE

Enlightx thats awesome! I'm amazed that it turned out so well. You must have one seriously well calibrated printer.

Can these patches be linked with eachother by hand? I'd print a T-shirt if it didnt mean trying to connect patches together with wire.

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-Tom

When I printed it on my prusa I re-sized it so it fit on my 200mm HPB, the size change didn't seem to cause a problem. I scaled it 0.92X 0.95Y 1.00Z
I will print another one for this comp when I can get my broken glass replaced, I was impatient and hit a part to get it off when everything was still hot.
I have a .35mm nozzle and used .20mm layer height

well calibrated printer LOL

i dont think anyone has a well calibrated printer.

i think were at a stage were so much new stuff is out all the time unless you have more then 2 printers you will never truly have a well calibrated printer long enough to keep it calibrated.

i got major Z wobble on mine but not bothering to fix it as im in the middle of doing a Prusa I3

Better than my X-carriage wobble from balance issues. Too bad there isnt time to work on it. Too busy building my MendelMax

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-Tom

> little tip : use water down PVA for your heated
> bed when using PLA Plastic. Then after the print
> has finished let the glass cool and remove take
> down to a sink and cover with soapy water. this
> will melt the PVA and lift the print very very
> easy.


I do the same thing with Hairspray, i think its easier to put on and it definitly dries faster.
Check out my post to see what I use (if there was comercial grade hairspray, this would be it )
[gearforge.blogspot.ca]

I had a go at the square that Enlightx put up.

Miserable failure!

Enlightx do you have any other slicer settings you think pertinent? I think my issues are largely with dragging plastic about and poor bridges, but even on repetier's screen the model looked a bit of a mess .... dont think it sliced well...

Oh well ... another day, another go ...

My first attempt with a modified version of the STL file.
I removed the middle four rows of links and then joined the two halves back together. Then I had to scale the model down to 95% size and finally got it to fit on a standard Mendel bed.

Sadly the quality wasn't quite as good as when I printed the test square, possibly because of the scaling factor.
I may get the time to have one more go with a few tweaks, but if not perhaps someone else would like to give it a go.

richgain Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My first attempt with a modified version of the
> STL file.
> I removed the middle four rows of links and then
> joined the two halves back together. Then I had to
> scale the model down to 95% size and finally got
> it to fit on a standard Mendel bed.

That's a good mod, the original scaled version didn't print well for me.
It looks like your's printed quite well, but does it act like fabric?, most of my test strips do not all fold and flex well.

>
> Sadly the quality wasn't quite as good as when I
> printed the test square, possibly because of the
> scaling factor.
> I may get the time to have one more go with a few
> tweaks, but if not perhaps someone else would like
> to give it a go.
>

I have 10 test squares and not one I'm all that happy with.

Printing with a 0.5mm nozzle seems to be causing some issues for me, but I am trying to print it without ANY extruder retraction, is anyone else doing that successfully? if not what minimum extruder distance do you have set in Slic3r?

I wonder if it's easier to print this in ABS? anyone tried?

I did get a better slice when lying about my nozzle size (making it bigger / 0.55mm / Normally 0.42mm) so you have less 'bits' on the ends of each square, they are causing me issues otherwise.

I have also tried it with and without Lift, not much difference.

I think I may just be trying to print too fast, or this is not good to print on a heated bed, anyone with a Blue tape bed, see if you get a good print.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

No success
I tried also "grid" type printing, It's flexible, but it (PLA) breaks if bend too much. Maybe with nylon, hmm...

... it's not meant to be elastic! - the single segments should come lose as in chain-mail ...

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Yeah true. Maybe I try once more, I''ll zoom test piece bigger (1.5x or even bigger), at some point it should work ><

My first attempt ,at the fabric turned out as above, all joined together, flexible but not desperate interlinked loops. Is it maybe speed or heat, are we maybe printing too quickly and having our bridges weld. There maybe an ideal layer height for the fabric as well. Just thoughts...

I'm going to keep this competition open, as it looks like we still have yet to get good prints of this object and even the fabric.

I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that Slic3r can't actually handle this fabric - anyone that has sucesfully used Slic3r (any version) please give us some pointers, I have a stack of printer fabric, and I can see from the GCODE, it's never going to be fully flexible, I'm still seeing parts connected in the GCODE that should have clearance - now tried with a 0.5mm nozzle and a 0.4mm nozzle.

I have made some changes to thefabric material STL, but can't get it to slice - it's just not going well

I'm also having major problems getting recent versions of Slic3r to work, if anyone can help with that I may be able to finally get this fabric printed...

@Enlightx Did you use Slic3r? or Kisslicer or Skeinforge. give me a clue (and did you use any extruder retract?)

This Fabric is driving me nutz

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

I doubt this is skeinforge, seems too fast - unless maybe he use pypy to run it ?

Quote
Enlightx
Sliced it at 60mm/sec and 20mm/sec bridges took i would say 15 mins to slice i think

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

Gave slicing it a try, but that computer I used is near the worst use case for skeinforge :

Build time is 1 hour 7 minutes 35 seconds.
...
The exported file is saved as Bureau/3D/Competitions/thing33054_square_export.gcode
It took 3 hours 43 minutes 23 seconds to export the file.

And using pypy (as packaged along with Cura) on the same machine :

It took 28 minutes 59 seconds to export the file.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2012 11:13AM by DeuxVis.

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

I sliced my 'almost' version with Kisslicer using these settings.
Hoping to get some time for another go this weekend.

richgain

This is the clutch I printed previously it's blue pla from ultimachine. I have a prusa i1 with 1.75mm solastruder and my own hotend with 0.35mm nozzle.
From KISSlicer:
; layer_thickness_mm = 0.2
; extrusion_width_mm = 0.38
; num_loops = 2
; skin_thickness_mm = 0.8
; infill_extrusion_width = 0.35

I've been having trouble getting Slic3r to work with this model as well; I noticed that it doesn't like overly complex models, even after running it through netfabb.

I did find a way of having it work though and here's what I did; First I imported the model into Slic3r 0.9.5's platter, then I exported the STL file. After that, repair that STL through netfabb and it should work. Reduced the time it took for the file to slice from about 370 minutes to 15 minutes.

I had a go at printing the clutch, but had hotend problems halfway though, so I'll be trying again once I get everything sorted out.

I had a test run at the square test on my prism. Not really convincing

I might try with soft PLA if I can find the time and energy.

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

Haven't forgotten about this one, I has some success at a slightly bigger scale, and with some other 'fabric's' planning to have another go at it soon.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]