Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am learning to print a model from Blender. If all goes well, this should be a short post, but even if it isn’t, I should have my suspicions confirmed or refuted about the Z-axis progression. Let’s get started.
OK, so I did play around with Blender a few years ago. This time, I just want to make something simple as a proof of concept. A pyramid. I can set up my phone to take a picture every minute while I’m printing and then graph the progress with respect to time.
I won’t cover the setup and learning curve of Blender; there are a lot of tutorials out there. Just do not try to learn it by trial and error. You’re likely to get washed away with all the buttons and menus. My understanding is that it is NOT beginning user friendly, but at the same time, I understand it is basically the definitive free, open source 3D modeling software. Once you learn the core skills, you can move onto many other fields; like animation, still renders, game graphics, and (in this case) 3D printing.
I’ve had a desire to learn it for games, but I am still to develop my sills there.
***
The 3D printer is once again printing. The filament was a bit more painful to load than I remember. Good thing I didn’t unload it between each one. Anyway, I managed to use an old install of Blender to program up a pyramid to print. I actually took a cube and squished the top face down as far as it could go without actually making it an actual 5 pointed model. It’s close enough to what I need. I had to export it to a .stl file, not save, it.
This is my first print in the new case. Leveling the table was a little tight, but if it keeps the cat out, I can live with it. Anyway, there was a little bit of plastic messing with my leveling procedures. I need to get in the habit of cleaning the extruder tip while it is still warm. I suppose it shouldn’t matter too much. That’s what I think the raft is for, to get the print to a predictable place.
I chose to make a pyramid so I could graph the percent completion with respect to time. That was the hardest part of this week’s project. While I could have just sat there for two hours and recorded the percent every ten minutes, I went ahead and searched for an app to take a picture every one minute.
When I looked for such an app, I was assaulted by apps that offer to take time lapse videos of one sort or another, all these fancy fancy features and social connectivity… NO! I just want something to click the button every 60 sec. and make a separate file I can scroll through, and graph the results.
But I would say the hardest thing was setting up for the recording. I had to charge my phone, and rig a mount for it. Here’s the app I ended up using [Link], Timer Camera by Three Starfish.
My father actually did the bulk of the hardware arrangement. Nothing too fancy; the camcorder and tripod I used on the video posts usually lives at my church where we use it to stream our services on Saturday mornings. We didn’t bring it home this week, and I don’t intend to post these pictures anyway. Simple data collection.
***
I graphed the data. For every photo, I took It’s almost linear, but there’s an inflection point where it speeds up rapidly after about 40 minutes. If this were simply a transition from raft and base layer to infill layers, that would explain things if it were z axis progression, but the second, faster part seems like it wants to be linear, but I’d need more data points for that. All I can do at this point is rule out percent time taken. I’d need a bigger/higher quality pyramid and a proper video of the progress bar.
Long story short: I took measurements of percent completion (almost) every minute. Now I want the min./sec. each percent is accomplished. It would be interesting to graph other shapes.
Final Question: I’ve eliminated time completed as the possible basis for percent completed. Maybe if I print up two more pyramids side by side (one after the other) that would give me more information. Anyway, What kind of shape would produce a graph that would look different if its completion was in plastic laid or z axis?