Thursday 3 May 2012

Day 5 - A quiet day

Corrie printed a tricycle which sadly broke apart when she was freeing it from the scaffolding. After the tricycle Corrie printed a selection of small objects and when the printer had finished something very odd happened; the printer began to extrude plastic all over the newly printed objects and the print head began moving around as if possessed! The platform raised itself and the nozzle collided with one of the objects it had just finished printing. The print nozzle cut through the object like a hot knife through butter.

I have not had this occur on any of my prints but it had happened to Corrie once before. I suspect the OSx print driver may have a bug as Corrie printing from her Macbook is the only variable I can think of that could be causing this issue. On a quiet day I may try a few tests to see if we can replicate the issue. After the print head collision the heating block and nozzle were coated in ABS which quickly turned black and required cleaning before resuming printing.

The following two pictures are Corrie's work, the spring is tiny and quite flexible. The other piece is a construct she cleverly created from excess raft and scaffold material which she has populated with miniature figures.


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