Carbon Fibre Filament job

Discussion in 'Show off' started by mike01hu, May 27, 2016.

  1. mike01hu

    mike01hu Well-Known Member

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    I am updating my 14" (355mm) astronomical telescope that I designed and built 4 years ago using 3D printing for some of the parts and decided to use CF20 for the upgrade (250C/70C, 200nm, PVA juice, 1.5mm retraction 0.25mm lift). It is proving to be a not so easy ride as the filament is prone to snot-drops, here is the progress so far with the warts. There are 8 parts to this ring and everyone of them has had a dribble cause a dislocation of the print head, the worst due to the nozzle starting to leak, so it pays to check nozzle tightness on a regular basis! I also had all(!!!) the X carriage rod clamps come loose despite all the commissioning checks and that played havoc with the levelling but quality aside the results so far are mechanically very good and the weight reduction over the aluminium original is excellent. 3 more parts to go but I have run out of filament and fans (no shield and finger trouble detaching a blade!). It definitely paid to have the second nozzle heated to help smooth the errant blobs. For those who spotted my Edge trial, yes it's the same part but Edge was a little heavier and not as stiff. I'll keep this updated.

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  2. Henry feldman

    Henry feldman Well-Known Member

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    Looks pretty good @mike01hu despite the one snot ball. Seems like you solved that curve banding issue from earlier (was it a setting in S3D) that we saw in Edge?
     
  3. Chase.Wichert

    Chase.Wichert Well-Known Member

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  4. mike01hu

    mike01hu Well-Known Member

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    @Chase.Wichert said it! Yes, I had accepted the SolidWorks default not expecting it to be low resolution as it was not with the earlier version I used. When export the STL there is a extra dialogue that I missed allowing me to change the minimum angle of the triangles; it was 10 degrees, so I reduced it to 1 with the subsequent results.

    I am not very happy with the overall results but I will make do, as it still looks OK and will do the job much better than the aluminium one I have at the moment and time is short to complete the job. If it was in PLA I would reprint until satisfied but a three times the cost my pension won't put up with it!:DPoking my finger into the fan has not helped my karma!:(
     
  5. Alex9779

    Alex9779 Moderator
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  6. mike01hu

    mike01hu Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Alex, I'll have a look.
     
  7. mike01hu

    mike01hu Well-Known Member

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    Update: Last piece printed and it was the best piece; photos to follow. My biggest bugbear has been snot drops that on the penultimate print caused a Y-step that was unrecoverable:(. All the way through the last print I was removing pickup from the nozzle before any dropped; it was not a leaking nozzle as I had checked that after the earlier discovery. What I did change as I progressed was the flow rate and finished at 85%, even though E steps were correct but, strangely, there was no sign of over-extrusion, the first layer and top layer remained perfect for all parts and it makes me query whether the LCD 'Tune' changes were actually having an effect. I'll do some first layer test pieces with on-the-fly settings to see.
     

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