themaninthesuitcase

So one step forwards, two back. Basically, I dropped it. This was the 1st part I printed and the temperature wasn't hot enough, and I am pretty sure under extruded. So it broke. As infuriating as this was last night it was always going to break, just a case of when. At least I've not done much assembly and finishing on it. I double checked some things this morning, like extrusion width and also destructively tested some of the chest parts I won't be using. I am pretty happy that with current settings the replacement will be up to snuff. That said, that right angle is a bit of a stress raiser so will reinforce it either by welding it or fibreglass. Also I'll try not to drop it again, especially as the price of filament has gone way up due to demand. Butt plate is almost done. The main sections are pretty large and more or less maxed the Z axis. Size seems good just hope it all fits once assembled! I'll be doing some of this before I get too ahead with the chest plate incase I need to make any changes. I also managed to get hold of an older copy of the chest plate file, which has holes! They are still the wrong shape so I have knocked up a "fixer" in fusion 360 that I will use to correct them. Once the part is printed I can measure the holes and update the parameters in the fusion file and print that. Once that's done I can carefully file the chest plate until the fixer fits and then fill all the remaining gaps and smooth it all.

Progress report! I have figured out the quality issue. Short story long: it was the 0.6 nozzle. After a fleet of benchy's and other test/calibration prints I just went and swapped back to the 0.4. And lo, the quality was back. So in the interest of saving hard work at post processing, I am going to take longer with the prints. Sort of how if I was able to print all night I'd print all this at 0.1mm layers instead of 0.2. This keeps the surface quality up and means I can keep infill and thus weight low. Just means a 20-30% ish longer print time. I'll cope. I was looking at the CRL again. Specifically the chest section, and discovered I am an idiot. Whilst I know my pills are a weird shape, I was going to fill them and reshape with drill bits as a mould, I missed that they punch all the way through. Had I done so I would have asked for a file mod, now I am half way through a reprint of the chest and don't really fancy a 3rd. Power tools it is. Rough plan is to Dremel off the back lump, plate over with some 1.5mm HIPS I have, and then drill, shape and fill as needed for the new holes. It's going to be a mess, and a pain but I have at least 1, possibly 2, spare copies of this part. Also at 5% infill there's not a lot of it in the way to drag drills off line etc. Fun times ahead.

Sent over a few $. If each of us sends even a small amount it can add up really quickly.

Good luck with your build!

I think I figured it out, it's to do with the infill lines. It was too regular and the same on all parts and something felt odd. I'm not ruling out mechanical fwiw, I do want to tighten the Y belt a notch or so as well I think but that's a bear of a job involving flipping the printer over and potentially skewing it etc. The front is the "updated" settings back is old. The changes where to Linear Advance K factor and infill %. Linear Advance is clever maths that slows the extruder down near corners to prevent over shoot. But you have to tell it by how much, the K factor. My filament setting was hard coded ages a got to K30. But that was for a 0.4 nozzle. Now I am using a 0.6 which needs to back off differently, so it's K18. These values can be worked out but I just use the defaults provided by Prusa. So the change I made was to copy the programatic GCode generation from a Prusa PLA to mine and now it can work out what K to use based on the nozzle (and printer and if it has a bowden. That fixes the pit marks on the Z seam, which are random as I have it set to random Z seam to prevent a big line on a part. The infill? I was using 5% to keep weight down. Infill, to an extent, doesn't make a part stronger the perimeters do. CNC Kitchen on youtube did a great video on this. The problem is infill does effect the surface finish. And as 0.6 puts down way more filament it's more visible. I went back and looked at the project file I kept for the part and the large band matched the infill exactly where it was joining the exterior walls. So the new part is running at 15% which still has some visible flaws but far less. I also feel the orientation seems to matter, not sure why so I am running the next part with the outside facing away from the controls to test this. For this part 10% means about 10g more weight. Doesn't sound like much but that now adds something like 120-150g to chest plate alone. So whilst I can no print faster with the 0.6 I am forced to add weight, which will probably be about 1kg in the end (or £20-25 as that's all filament) Whilst the finish is still not perfect, it's close enough for sanding which needs to happen anyway. I'll worry more about perfect when I swap back to the 0.4 after the main parts are done and I need to re-do my upgrade parts.

The irritating thing is it was perfect before the upgrade. But so much changed I don’t know what that cause was! The belts? The nozzle? Firmware even.

I'm not happy with the print quality since the rebuild. I've upped the contrast and clarity to really show the mess in this image. Taking the time needed to close down on the issues. I've already fixed some of them and am working on the general surface now. I had printed the entire chest plate, 0.6 is sooooo much faster, but once I'm happy I'll probably re-do it as it will save a ton of time in finish work, even if it does mean I wasted most a roll of filament.

Those non R1 helmets look spot on for anovos to me. The sharp tears and general shape do it for me. The ears look off but that might be the angle or heavy weathering.

I guess I should show some progress! Essentially the main body is all ready for final prime and paint. All the small detail parts I want to reprint on my Elegoo Mars resin printer but need to finish sorting the spare room for it first. The last furniture should arrive tomorrow so I may be able to start next week with any luck. I was running it in the conservatory but the light levels in there are not just far too high to be using a UV curing product. I just need to find some curtains for that room! Took a while to get to this point as I am having to learn how to sand. Sound stupid but knowing what grits to use and when to change is actually harder than it sounds. Also I think I have a habit of going too course which doesn't really do as much other than leave deep scratches. I think I am going to make 150 my "heavy" grit for PLA work from now on, the 120 just was too aggressive.

Welcome to the FISD Adam, Sounds like you're off to a good start, not a huge number of ESB troopers about. Make sure you pay attention to the differences, you can't just blindly follow ANH. Off the top of my head other than the helmet paint scheme, hand guards you also will need to get the correct holster on the right hip with loops. If you haven't yet done so please head over to the UK Garrison and start a WIP thread there. This is a part of the clearance process for us and so getting started early helps. The armourer team are also very knowledgeable and will give good guidance when needed. Not sure where you are based but I am sure that I'll see you around once the world reopens. Chris.

The upgrade is complete! A few issues needed overcoming, annoyingly I suspect these could have been avoided if I had done an extruder calibration before I printed the upgrade parts. I was only printing 94% of the material I was asking for so everything is a shade small, meaning holes are a tad loose. Managed to work round them all and it's working so I'll leave alone for now but I'll need to reprint a fair amount of parts and rebuild at some point. The part fan is getting a bit loud which may force my hand at some point, so I'll start getting some of the parts I need in stock as time allows. Loving the new quiet cooling fan as well as the flex bed and filament sensor. Really should have done this when it first came out. Also swapped to the 0.6mm nozzle which should speed stuff up a reasonable amount, First on the print bed was a size test for the helmet. Basically take a slice of the helmet around the eyes and print it and see if it will fit or not. Printing on 0.35mm layers, fast with 5% infill to really smash them out. Don't need to be pretty just exist so I can try them on.

Some crimp tools have a sheering tool on them, I used that.

Give it a few minutes and it should not be archived.

Account deleted as requested.

He replied quickly to me, need to get a test print knocked out so I can get some measurements to him.