MMU Saturn V Rocket (snap-together)

prusaprinters

<p>This is a remix of <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:45316">RealAbsurdity's wonderful "Modular Snap-Fit Saturn V"</a> rocket design from thingiverse, but I re-built it for printing on my Prusa MMU2S!</p> <p>The coloration is based on as many pictures of Apollo-era Saturn V as I could find, as well as some great info from this <a href="https://vintagespace.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/painting-rockets/">VintageSpace blog post</a> with only slight modifications.</p> <p>I have spent the last several weeks modeling and re-modeling this, tweaking and test-printing each piece multiple times until I was satisfied with the outcome.</p> <h3>Print instructions</h3><h3>Printing this</h3><p><strong>NOTE:</strong> this model was designed specifically to be printed with a multi-extruder or MMU-enabled printer. It was NOT designed for each color to be printed separately and then glued together afterward. I don't think that would work, since the pieces for each color support each other, and interlock in ways that wouldn't be possible to put together after the fact.</p> <p>I printed this on my Prusa i3 MK3s MMU2s with fantastic results using PLA (Hatchbox "True White" and "True Black", and Prusament silver/grey). I sliced this with PrusaSlicer, set to 0.20mm on the "speed" preset, and 20% infill, with filament "purge volume" set to 200mm for all colors (that's a lot... but I was getting too much color bleeding between black and white if I purged any less). I did not use any rafts or supports, and did not tweak any other print settings.</p> <p>It took me around 20 hours to print a complete rocket (at default size, printing all sections together at once). Since there is so much filament purged for this print, I actually ended up printing 3 complete rockets at once (see picture), just to get more results for the same amount of purged filament. Printing 3 complete rockets took around 30 hours, compared to 20 hours for printing 1 rocket.</p> <p>I have printed this at its default (100%) size (around 12" tall) 4 or 5 separate times with great success.</p> <p>I sliced this with PrusaSlicer, so that's all I know how to use. (I'm sure it should work with other slicers as well, I just haven't tested it).<br/> In PrusaSlicer, I just set it to the MMU2S printer profile, then multi-select and drag all the color files for each "stage" in together to have each "stage" be treated as a multi-color object.</p> <p>I uploaded a <code>.3mf</code> project you should be able to import directly into PrusaSlicer, which has all of the parts plated, and that's probably the easiest place to start.</p> <p>I also uploaded a pre-sliced <code>.gcode</code> file you can print directly, if you have a MK3S MMU2S. Note that this gcode was sliced with the silver/gray filament on extruder #3, black on extruder #4, and white on extruder #5 (extruders #1 and #2 are unused), so you'd have to be sure to load those filaments into those extruders before using that gcode file.</p> <p>But otherwise, here are the files you'll need to print for each stage:<br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage1_black.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage1_silver.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage1_white.stl</code></p> <p><code>- SaturnV_Stage2_white.stl</code></p> <p><code>- SaturnV_Stage3_black.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage3_white.stl</code></p> <p><code>- SaturnV_Stage4_black.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage4_silver.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage4_white.stl</code></p> <p><code>- SaturnV_H-Clips.stl</code></p> <h3>Printing at a larger scale:</h3><p>I also printed this—as you can see in some of the pictures—at a much larger size (280% scale, around 3 feet tall), also with fantastic results. There's enough detail in there to really make it shine at these larger sizes!</p> <p>I did all of the scaling in PrusaSlicer itself, by just plating things and then adjusting the scale of each part to 280%. I chose this scale because anything larger would be too tall for my printable area.</p> <p>To make this print well at the larger scale, I split the "Stage 4" piece into two sections, (since the original was too tall to print in one piece on my Prusa i3 MK3s printer). I've included those alternate "Split" files here as well, for anyone wanting to print this at a larger scale.</p> <p>For convenience, I also uploaded a separate <code>.3mf</code> file with everything scaled up to 2.8x (and using the "split" stage 4 version) which you can import directly into PrusaSlicer. I personally did not print all of the parts all together at once like this (I printed each section separately, since I was tweaking and iterating on the details of each piece as I went). But it should be theoretically possible, since they all fit (including a purge block) on the build plate. I haven't done the math to figure out whether printing separately or combined takes up more time/filament</p> <p>If you're not using the .3mf file, you can just import all the same files as listed above, except, <strong>INSTEAD OF</strong>:</p> <p><code>- SaturnV_Stage4_black.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage4_silver.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage4_white.stl</code></p> <p>use:</p> <p><code>- SaturnV_Stage4-SPLIT-A_black.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage4-SPLIT-A_white.stl</code></p> <p>and:</p> <p><code>- SaturnV_Stage4-SPLIT-B_silver.stl</code><br/> <code>- SaturnV_Stage4-SPLIT-B_white.stl</code></p> <p>I also included a modified, hollowed-out version of the escape tower (top of the "Stage 4" piece) that's truer to the real life rocket's design. This hollow version of the escape tower printed fine for me at 280% size—without needing supports or anything. But I imagine it would not actually print correctly at smaller scales, because the details are just too small.</p> <p>If you want to print the hollow version of the escape tower, swap out that last file in the list above for <code>SaturnV_Stage4-SPLIT-B_white_hollow.stl</code> instead (it should pair nicely with the same <code>SaturnV_Stage4-SPLIT-B_silver.stl</code> piece)</p> <p>On this larger version, the two halves of the Split Stage4 section will need to be glued together after printing, as they do not have snaps. You will likely find that most of the rest of the sections might benefit from being glued together as well. This isn't strictly necessary, since they snap together just fine. But when you scale things up, the tolerances also scale up, so there's a lot more wiggle room after you snap things together... and a little bit of glue between each section helps hold things in place better. It's up to you!</p>