Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am taking a little side quest to try out some techniques so I can paint my Raspberry Pi case and have it look good. Let’s get Started.
I decided to paint one or more of my old test prints. The first two were an acrylic paint straight onto the plastic. It didn’t work all that well. I couldn’t even get a small piece devoid of any brush strokes, and I want a smooth finish. On top of that, I was able to easily scrape off part of the paint with my finger nail after it was fully dry.
My next step took the rest of the time for the week. I moved over to a goal of spray painting, so I printed up another pyramid from when I tried to figure out if the percent completed was in terms of time, z axis, or plastic used.
I was thinking of testing both sanded and unsanded surfaces, so I was going to print it twice, but I cut back and only sanded half of it. I still have the original around, but I wanted to leave that one alone as sort of a memory piece. Printing it again reminded me of how difficult the raft was to get off.
After getting most of the raft off, I got out the sandpaper, going through grits of 80, 150, 220, 320, and 600, using water for the fine grits on “waterproof” paper, and I actually got it pretty smooth. I did get the stubborn part of the raft off. After going back and forth on what part of the model to mask off first, I decided on using some blue painters’ tape to mask off the very top and dangling the whole thing off that. I applied two layers of white spray paint, including the bottom (primer included in paint). I let it sit for a day over Sabbath. After it had the recommended 24 hours to dry, I masked off the rest of the pyramid body and painted the capstone yellow.
As I peeled back the masking, I saw a few spots where I didn’t make sure the tape was perfectly creased in there and it leaked in. Lesson learned: use your thumbnail ensure the quality of your masking.
In the end, I like the smoother sides. The little ridges from printing poke out a little, and I’m not sure if they are catching dirt or wearing through, but I think it may be worth it to put the bit of extra effort to make the final product just that much better.
Final Question: I’ve been thinking of including a sub-title for multi-part projects. This one would have been something like: “(Side Quest: Painting Skills)”, but that makes it harder to just edit the URL to jump to adjacent posts. I know I don’t likely have enough regular readers to warrant this question, but should I include subtitles?