Space Battleship

thingiverse

I converted a spaceship from a game to a .stl, then printed on my RepMan - Dual Head. Conversion was difficult, lots of support material is required for the print. Currently this is an 'ant in amber' Melt away the amber and voila! Be careful using Skeinforge - it placed a support layer inside the model, releasing the halves when dissolved by the caustic solution. Instructions Support material is needed. Watch your temps. Print shown is 2 head: Head 1 (blue) = ABS, Head 2 (support-Red) = PLA. The PLA will dissolve in a mixture of hydroxide in water or isopropanol. I will update when I dissolve the PLA UPDATE: 11/28/10 I dissolved 95% of the PLA over 10 hours at work. The remainder of the PLA was tricky due to the compounding and alloying with the ABS. I found a ultrasonic cleaner on clearance - that did amazing work on the remainder in less than 1 hour. I needed to use a little acetone to release the PLA from the ABS. However, that ended up giving a 'frosted' appearance to the blue ABS. The 'frosted' appearance was partially released by a little fire-polishing. Lessons: 1) Use a LOWER TEMP for the PLA support - eliminates alloy problems 2) DON'T USE ACETONE ON COLORED ABS - really screws up the look/color. 3) Fire polishing CAN help - both blob and color probs, but BE CAREFUL! -ren