Beter printing through radiation

[sandersj]

Hi all,

I just did something that really helped print quality on my Rostock so I thought I'd share. I can only suspect that this has been done before but I'll toss it out there.

I'm just starting my initial experimentation with printing on my Rostock and I have to say I'm extremely impressed with it. On the friday before labor day I started my third print on it which was a 51 hour print of a center fuselage section for an RC aircraft I'm designing. I started the print and when I came back to work the next tuesday it had finished! There were tons of layer separation issues but I was still pretty impressed.


Soooooooo, I did a redesign of the part to reduce weight ad printed it again (cut in half) and as expected once again I had serious layer separations.

I figured that a heated enclosure would help but didn't really feel like building a big a$$ box around my Rostock so I thought I'd heat the part in the build volume via simple thermal radiation. I did some horrible things to a parabolic radiant space heater so I could tilt it and CHANGING NOTHING I hit print on the same part.

Print results were WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY better.

51 hour print result. Object is 12 inches tall.

[Jimustanguitar]

Heat definitely helps. I've solved many of my own printing problems by just cranking up the temps (currently using 240c/110c for ABS).

This reminds me of the alternative heated enclosure that has been talked about lately that used a 100w incandescent reflector bulb to heat the print chamber... I guess the moral of the story is that whether you've got an enclosed volume of air or not, an increased temperature envelope will help a print.

Be safe, I wouldn't leave that setup unattended!