I modelled it at 1000th scale - and thought it would just about fit on the build plate diagonally, but didn’t quite fit. As the text on side and back didn’t really work very well with a 0.4mm nozzle. So decided to scale it up in Bambu Slicer to 200% - i.e. 1/500th scale - so will end up being about 2.5 build plates wide.
Might also print it at 1000th scale with a 0.2mm nozzle too later.
First section printed in about 3 hours today using a 0.4mm Nozzle and 0.2mm layer height - the back part of the hull. -
No idea how long its is going to take to print the other decks - will probably need some refinement of the model to get everything to look nice and print ok.
So far very happy with the X1C and AMS (x2) - pretty much flawless operation so far - after a fair amount of respooling of filament.
A massive step forward both in terms of speed and multi colour reliability compared to my previous attempts at Prusa MMU2s, Palette P2Ps and Idex printers.
One thing I would like to work out how to do better is getting Bambu Studio to select the right colours for each of the STLs - Prusa Slicer selects a different colour for each imported STL - which if you order the names of the STL files correctly can work quite nicely.
Interesting idea. At 1000th scale lifting the whole ship up at an angle would give some more length, but would then mean masses more colour changes for the red line at the bottom. I suppose I could Seperate it into a separate part to solve that problem.
I’m not too concerned about the model being in separate parts as it does mean it can be tackled in smaller chunks (or in parallel on multiple printers).
I wondered how far you can go with making the joints as invisible as possible - maybe some sort of feathering of the edges, with the parts then tightly bolted together could end up looking better than the dovetail joints I had planned to use.
Have also been thinking about how I could reduce the size of the text as much as I can - as text resolution is one of the things driving the large size, Will probably start a separate thread to discuss thoughts on that.
Firstly, try Arachne slicer as that one allows much more detail (though mostly in horizontal text) and also tends to be a bit faster with less gap infills and retractions.
Secondly, if you don’t care about dividing it, then try fitting more than one print on the same bed. That will waste a lot less filament and make your prints per part much much faster.
Interestingly in my testing so far on I seem to be able to get smaller text when printing vertically than horizontally which wasn’t what I was expecting. Managed to get some 1.25mm Helvectica bold text to be readable when I extrude it a few mm’s in with 0.2mm layers.
Will be interested to see how the Arachne slicer changes things - because horizontal text will be better for limiting colour changes if I can get it small and good enough.
Arachne slicer allows lines smaller (in width) than your default extrusion width, that’s something akin to “horizontal resolution”, though in only line width and you won’t get nice and sturdy lines when you try to make just a 0.3mm width with a 0.4mm nozzle - those lines will be more “round”.
With a 0.4mm nozzle width defaults to 0.42mm which makes it flatter and more like a real 2D line. Vertical resolution is by default limited to 0.08mm which is way smaller, not sure how our printers handle 0.05mm - I think technically they should be capable. I think this is what you’re talking about?
I’m not sure if on a model such as this there is much need for higher “horizontal resolution”, most of the text is vertical, right? Thinner nozzle will make everything more detailed but take much longer to print. But there’s another trick you can use and that is to use the 0.2mm nozzle but force it to make much higher width lines (like the 0.4mm does) and use the Arachne slicer to decrease that width to less than that for details. But I’m not sure whether Arachne was really designed to do that…
Ah - that’s the prusa slicer upgrade that allows you to use a 0.6 nozzle on a Prusa’s and get potentially as good a results as a 0.4 nozzle. Was planning to make that change at some point on my MK3s.
Doesn’t from what I have read sound like going to a 0.6mm nozzle on the X1C is as beneficial - due to filament flow limitations - but I am planning to try that out as part of the print of some of my upper decks. I’ve got a 0.6mm hot end combo, and got a 0.2mm hot end only - so ordered the fan, heater etc, yesterday - so once that arrives will give the 0.2mm a go on some of the parts.
In the meantime its quite interesting just trying things in Bambu Slicer - as hopefully it is giving a fair estimation of what the real results will look like.
No problem, keep us updated, this looks like a pretty cool project
It’s not only for bigger nozzles, although there’s a difference between printing fast as we do on our X1s or printing fat layers to get the same effective speed, and that is layer adhesion. You can’t print engineering materials that fast and expect them to stick, but you can still make the extrusion wide/high and print a bit slower while maintaining the strength. Also some materials simply demand bigger nozzles not to clog.
I forgot that those settings are not in the Bambu Studio by default, I use the SoftFever fork. I already used those settings to fine-tune very thin lines for some fidget bearings and it worked well. In your case you might want to try printing even thinner details by tuning it lower with bigger extrusion width for speed (both feature size and width).
What I had in mind was trying the 0.2mm nozzle with a 0.4mm extrusion width, but having the outer walls and surfaces printed with 0.2mm width. Then you can tune Arachne to something like 40% feature width + 10% feature size and maintain all detail while having essentially the same speed as with a 0.4mm nozzle. This is theoretical, though, I haven’t tried it myself (yet!).
Made a bit of a silly mistake though - The the text on is angled up a little bit, as the text goes back into the model a few mm’s it meant there were a few layers when colour switches were done just for the internal parts of the text.
6mm Vertical Helvetica Bold using Arcane even better
Also pretty happy with with Arial Rounded 3mm using classic slicer. Probably should have printed the bow upside down - as the angle is a bit steep for printing without support - X1C didn’t do too bad though.
About 11 hrs of 3 colour printing so far - completely flawless operation so far for hull in photos.
Fir other dual AMS prints only had one jam which I don’t quite understand, the only other problems I’ve had with the AMS relate to brittle filament snapping on pull back.
Like the lifeboats and railings underneath them in particular.
Printing the lifeboats was quite fun - had to put them on rafts - as otherwise the really little ones fell off the bed. Had to reprint half of them - because I forgot to mirror them!
Almost finished print now - just 3 decks more to go - thought it might be quite interesting to see my investigations on how to print the funnel efficiently.
If I print it as one multi coloured print - 229 colour changes - nearly 6 hrs
If make sure the colours only run as deep as they need to - rather than all the way through, plus then split the funnel into 2 halves on their sides - colour changes go down to 93, and print time to 3 hrs
If I go even further - and split to funnel into 3 - and further limit the internal colouring - changes go down to 30, and print time down to about 1.5hrs.
Think I will probably end up going for Option 2 - the splitting down the middle option - but interesting to see how much you can reduce print times by some careful splitting of models.
Just came up with another option 2 parts angled with supports - not sure how much cleanup will be required - but this one is say 41 changes and 2 hrs print time - so might go for this one initially
Thanks - Im really pleased with the results so far. Probably about 40 hrs printing time now - in about 10 separate plates of printing.
So far 2 failures due to my mistakes - of having gaps between layers.
Other than that the AMS has only complained twice - both times due to spools that are getting a bit empty - so have added in weights into the desiccant holders in the middle.
Best moment so far was when got Amazon delivery of more white filament only about 30 mins before it ran out - and managed to swap out the filament mid print - while it was printing another colour.
Will hopefully finish tomorrow and will post a few pictures of overall print.
I’m amazed you got it done so quickly, and at such high quality. I thought it seemed pretty ambitious when you started, but less than 2 weeks later and you’re almost done.
You probably spent more time modeling than printing, which is incredible.
Have you kept track of how much material you’ve used and how much waste you’ve generated? I’m assuming you’re going to sell these?
Yes modelling took weeks - while I was waiting for the printer to arrive, plus quite a lot more while I’ve been printing to split the model down, including fasteners etc, plus completing the ‘port’ side of the model - as I only really concentrated on modelling one side initially.
I’ve kept all of the off bed purges and most of the purge towers - which are 99% for this print - not too bad so far. Still fits into a fairly small ice cream container that I am using to catch it.
To get approximations of the material usage I think I will just go through and re-slice the whole lot.
Not sure what I am going to do with the model/prints - might post my final printed model onto the P&O Cruises Facebook / Twitter etc. to see if it or other 3d printed cruise ship models spark any interest with cruisers.
One good thing too is that quite a lot Celebrity Cruise ships (with P&O Cruises are part of) are based on the same basic model of ship, with just different minor bits and decal etc. - so creating other variations of the same ship should be much easier!
First iteration of cruise ship print now complete.
Total print time - about 12 days, apps 4-8 hrs printing a day.
Printed in 13 separate layers - each layer split into 3-6 parts due to bed size limitations. Longest individual plate print about 6 hrs.
Total weight of printed ship 1037g (call it 1kg if you take out a bit for the bolts holding it together)
Total Waste (purge strings and blocks) - about 350g
Am planning to re-slice the whole lot to work out some more accurate print time, colour swap info.
AMS worked pretty well - only problems I had were about 5 or 6 pauses due to almost empty spools not rolling very well. Tried weighted centres which worked a bit - but really need a better solution - will probably try designing something to hold the spools down at the centre.
Only other issues where two spaghetti warnings - both due to single strings of off bed purge finding their way onto the build plate - so I think that worked perfectly.
