@MalcTheOracle Spot the Lack in here - may look a bit flimsy - but working out pretty well so far for me for the last few months.
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Making some progress with incorporating the melted flat sheets into my ‘purge block’
system.
Plus some smaller stand alone brackets - for making things like boxes etc.
Quite pleased with the little 3d printed grub screws.
Test prints in solid colours - but will eventually start creating them as flush-into ‘purge blocks’
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Mini Purge Block / Melted sheet table. Design needs a bit of work - and parts need to be proper purge blocks - rather than just waste old filament - but quite pleased with it anyway
Lots more sheets left
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Ready to start Britannia printing.
Without flush objects - Flush ratio about 110% - print time 18h17m
With lots of flush objects - print time up by 9h28m to 27h45m, but flush ratio down to less than 5%
Print time for flush objects by themselves would be 11h40m - so also a couple of hours total print time saving.
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Is there a way to utilize print by object instead of print by layer to manage the waste? It would be preferable ensure proper clearance to print a separate object (or group of objects) of Exactly 109 g in the ship example to printing an additional 169 g of material to recover the 109 g.
This would create challenges with ensuring proper print head clearance but I would think it would be more efficient provided the gcode can be adjusted to create a safe path to where the last object layer where printing was paused.
Yes it would certainly be technically possible to reduce the number of purge objects by allowing the print head to up or down a few layers when doing the purge objects, and this would reduce the total print time down possibly to close to the time it would take to do normal off bed purge.
My focus so far has been mainly on keeping things as standard as possible - but I do agree that the substantial increases in print time that are often needed to save the purge are difficult for many people to accept.
indeed I have recently myself done quite a few standard prints without flush objects, as the waste is less of an issue to me now that I have the melted flat sheet solution.
I think a good way of approaching this is to do some GCODE analysis of for example the most recent print I did, to see whether it would be possible to post process it and automatically remove one or more whole flush objects by introducing a degree of Z axis freedom when creating the other flush objects.
I think it should be possible to include within the logic intelligence to avoid the head clashing with objects already printed.
I am in the early stages of working on something similar related to avoiding head clashes when doing parallel printing using multiple fully independent print heads trying to print in parallel on the same fixed print bed.
I am thinking that some sort of Blender addin might be able to help with this - as its possible within Blender to model the precise structure of the print head, rails, movement and print as it grows up - so that you can then check that any paths generated to do clash with the print or other print heads.
Update - raised a BS enhancement request for this feature here
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Nice haul of extra table parts - and only 8g of waste (BS estimate 5.85), or total of 21g including slightly messy prime tower.
interestingly I didn’t get any purge shoot build ups with the 27hr print spread over about 45hrs.
One part failed slightly near the end (on near the prime tower), and unfortunately due to a design mistake with supports the actual multi coloured print isn’t good enough for release.
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Table top made of full flush-blocks (rather than waste filament) plus Micheal Laws (Teaching Tech) flat sheets (out of flush spirals) now complete - I like the look of the contrasting patterns.
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Will you leave these looking like an acid trip or do you intend to paint them?
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No I like the colouring of the flush-block parts. I am however planning to try printing directly onto the flat sheets at some point - so I could I suppose cover up the colours with a couple of layers to flatten them out which would also mostly hide the colours on the less attractive sheets.
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Interesting result so far.
Further up you asked the question if it is worth reducing the flushed filament while increasing the print time. I think that entirely depends on what value the flushed-into-objects hold to you. - Same with sheets and compressive molds from waste.
My thoughts:
A lot can be done but the biggest hassle (mainly in the first world) is that we simply do have nearly everything in abundance and these “products from rescued ressources” often look a bit silly right next to the common casual products - or are plain inferior to what we are accustomed to.
But, a table it is and it works. If you have no table at all, there already is value.
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To make up for printing a few ships without flush-into objects - decided to do some waste free shoe horns with flags
Little flag - flush ratio fairly tiny - only about 6%
Down to pretty much zero
Bigger Flag - Flush Ratio - about 90%
Improved to <2%
Some more
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Not directly flush waste related - but have been working on a gcode post processor to segment up prints vertically - for parallel printing (which I am still hoping the 1Q25 BL printer has) - by cutting out parts of the print within a particular rectangle - and adjusting any lines or arcs that may be partly in and partly out of the segment.
Could also quite easily do things like post process the gcode to remove things like the prime tower.
Some examples of the output attached - the biggest issue is probably travel moves around the cut edge.
Straight lines aren’t too difficult as they only intersect the border in a maximum of 2 places. Arcs are a lot more complicated. In the short term I solved the issue by converting the arcs into lots of little straight lines.
Before
After
Travel moves (shown in blue) around the edges of the segment are probably the biggest issue.
Example of more complicated print - which took quite a while to process
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I am curious about your use of python, here. Can you share more about your scripts? It has been a while since I’ve used python. I’d love to figure out how to optimize my prints for my kids. They love using the AMS, but some of these trinkets weigh 4 grams and purge 24 grams!
Unfortunately I haven’t progressed my scripts to a state where they are suitable for sharing.
My aim was to create a ‘print queue’ - which would manage a list of ‘to print’ objects - and then automatically select the right ones to match the print in question - working out which object best matched the objects to be printed in terms of layers where colour changes happened etc.
More recently I have focussed more on just manually adding parts of my purge table, or just letting the purge happen and then melting it into flat sheets.
If I ever get back to working on this - I think what I will want to do is create a post processor that firstly selects ideal objects for flushing into - plus also modifies the gcode to move the Z position up or down a little bit - so that the flush objects ideally don’t add any additional time to the prints.
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