How to print with glass  

RE: How to print with glass

I'm still not sure what is the best way to smooth with acetone. 

For the vapor method I've been lining a jar or a paint can with a paper towel and pouring some acetone and letting it seep into the fibers. This gives you a good smooth surface but for thinner stuff it gets very soft, almost rubbery, which partly goes away. 

Using the brush or the dip is more tricky but everything stays firm.

RE: How to print with glass

I've been experimenting with getting translucent (not fully transparent) prints. I'm not ever expecting to get smooth, glass-like transparency without sanding and other post-processing. I've settled on 2.38mm (standard picture frame glass) thickness for testing. I'm using some of the parameters from @rygar1432's "printing glass" article:

• 0 top and bottom layers
• Slow speeds (20mm/s)
• 100% infill

I've gone with my usual other settings:

• 0.60mm nozzle with 1mm default extrusion width
• 0.2mm layer height (0.1-0.2 works well)
• 1 perimeter
• 3mm^3/s max volumetric speed
• 260C on 80C bed (PETG & nGen)

Clarity looks good up close:

I'm using a "5 penny" stack (approx. 7.33mm) to gauge transparency at a distance:

Overall clarity and consistency are pretty good, at least for my purposes:

Even a 5mm thick slab has good clarity and consistency:

One thing you might have noticed in the pics (besides the fact that my dog sheds) is the difference in clarity between the left & right of each image. Being inherently lazy, I don't want to spend a lot of time sanding and preparing prints. I tried the old scale modeler trick of dipping the right side of each print into acrylic floor polish. It does a good job of filling in small gaps, particularly prints on my semi-textured glass bed. The right of each print pictured above was dipped. I'm pleased with the results.

RE: How to print with glass

@bobstro

Hey thanks for the update.  I'm trying to get back into some experimentation myself.  I'll give your settings a try too.  Thanks!

RE: How to print with glass

Posted by: @ssill2

[...]  I'm trying to get back into some experimentation myself.  I'll give your settings a try too.  Thanks!

My Prusa is still out of action, so I'm limited to the funky bed on my Sidewinder. I think the prints would look even better printed on a smooth PEI sheet.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: I disregarded all the stuff about raising the extrusion multiplier. These were printed with a 0.90 multiplier. I do usually use a 25-35% infill overlap, and that seems sufficient. With higher extrusion rates, I got rough top layers that screwed up the uniformity necessary for clarity. Slow and hot seem to be the key. I'm still going to try more with higher layer heights, but they're definitely more of a challenge. 0.2mm seems to be the best balance between clarity & speed I've found.

RE: How to print with glass

One thing I should mention: The technique I am using is good for flat walls. A 3D model like a statue will require a different approach. I'm printing things like slide-in panels for bird feeders. Statues and miniatures will be a different challenge.

RE: How to print with glass

Not trying to hijack the thread,

I just got off the phone with Paramount3d for another matter, however while I was there I mentioned a couple of things that they told me about (early-covid) and they are actually posting the new products with in the next 24 hours TPU for one 😊,  in their awesome colors. Also I brought up to them that more folks would love to have more selection of colors in master spool selections, I was told they are looking for more feed back to see what colors & materials folks will be interested in for master spool, I assured them people are interested.

Just A heads up for those of you who love their filaments

Enjoy

Swiss_Cheese

RE: How to print with glass

@swiss_cheese

That's great news!   They do have great colors!.

RE: How to print with glass

Paramount recently started offering PLA in spool-less format, albeit the color range is limited for now. Their FlexPLA is... interesting. I'm not a big flexible user, so can't really compare it to anything else. 

RE: How to print with glass

@bobstro

I mentioned to them that the community would appreciate more color selection in master spool form, they are looking for feed back.

RE: How to print with glass

So far the best I've been able to get was with using S3D as the slicer using roughly the settings from the original how to print with glass guide.

RE: How to print with glass

Hey, that's looking pretty good, are you going to post process it?

RE: How to print with glass

@swiss_cheese

I have a pack of different levels of sandpaper.  I'll probably sand off the blobs and then use the wet fine grained sandpaper.  I've been unable to reproduce anything like this with Prusaslicer but I'm guessing it's possible.  The original settings were something like .55mm width, .1mm layer height and like 260C nozzle.  This is all with .4mm nozzle.  I would like to figure out how to get this sort of quality out of the prusaslicer, just have to trial and error until I do lol

RE: How to print with glass

I remember that you were working on the conversion, I thought this was the result. so that's the original from the S3d G-code?

I neglected to read the bit of text above it, DOH! I just like to look at the pretty pictures. 🤪

RE: How to print with glass

@swiss_cheese

That was the original produced from S3D.  I'm going try to start a fresh with a conversion again.  I was in the zone back at that time, and I'll have to get back in the zone.

RE: How to print with glass

That's why I keep notes, it helps put you back on track after leaving a project for awhile, and I'm old. 🤓 

RE: How to print with glass

PrusaSlicer parameters don't translate exactly, but you can get close (depending on your needs). Excessive extrusion at the edges is not helping. You can really see this in the Batarang print:

I'm going to work with reducing the extrusion multiplier and tuning Linear Advance for this filament next.

I'm focused on flat pieces now as any errors in low prints will be magnified as they get taller.

RE: How to print with glass

@bobstro

that looks really nice.  I'm trying to stick with a .4mm nozzle so that's definitely going to make my settings different from yours.  I'm going to try using your settings as a starting point.  I'm using Atomic Filaments clear petg for this.

Thanks!

RE: How to print with glass

I think the flat pieces will be the most useful in general, most folks seem to be trying to make windows of some sort or another. it's also useful to see what the clarity/diffusion is when the samples are elevated off of the text a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch or so.

I wish I had some clear ABS around here.

RE: How to print with glass

@swiss_cheese

yeah I agree, but I'm thinking something like the moai(easter island head) could look pretty cool too.  Or maybe some halloween decorations.

RE: How to print with glass

I think they would be great too. and I cant wait to see what the one you printed looks like after its Sanded and polished.