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Thingi Thursday: The Print Off 2
The Cube's tank model vs the UP!'s tank model
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The tanks as they came off both printers shrouded in support
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The two tanks close-up, you can see the UP! (white model) is a little smoother with better detail
After the last ThingiThursday many felt the UP! didn’t get a fair run out, it failed at first hurdle after some calibration issues. A return to form has seen the PP3DP machine printing like a dream this week as it prints out part after part on a top secret mission. It was time for the Print Off II.
The model we used this week was a simplified Tiger Tank, a request from a member of the team who wanted to show his grandfather a 3D printed model of the very tanks he used to blow up in the war.
Now that I’ve been running this feature for a while I knew that the model, with the turret and tracks, would present a support problem for both the UP! Plus and 3D Systems' Cube but heck, they need a challenge every now and again don't they?
I set both printers off at the same time, The UP!’s was set to 0.25mm Z resolution (the same as the Cube) and printed on ‘normal’ speed so as we could best compare the two printers.
The UP! printed the model in 38 minutes and the Cube completed in 55 minutes, both were shrouded in support material that an experienced eye could tell would be very difficult and time consuming to remove.
I’d say of both the printers if you can avoid support material, do, they both try to print easily removable support but it gets into places that make it very rather fiddly to remove. If you are printing with support, the bigger the model the better, these micro-machine-esque tanks make it nigh on impossible to remove all support.
After some fiddly support removal, from a distance, the two models look fine and the main thing is that they both worked (and that the 'customer' was happy...), on closer inspection there is still some support material in inaccessible places. The UP!’s model certainly has more detail and is a lot smoother even with the Z resolution set 0.10 mm higher than it can normally achieve.
This smoother finish and faster printing time means that the John Burn Ltd. supplied UP! has to be the winner of this ThingiThursday Print Off meaning the two are tied at one each. Decider next week? Be rude not to.
