First prints

The first thing I wanted to print my new Airwolf3D HD was the face of one of my digital sculptures. I had sculpted this six years ago as part of a gallery series. Since these types of models are primarily what I want to be printing I thought I would start with some older pieces rather than start a new model.

digital model created in Zbrush and rendered in modo

I learnt a lot just trying to get a perfect print of this model. My initial prints had some flaws in them. These were mostly me just leveling my print bed and trying different slicers that are bundled with MatterControl a free open source slicing app from Matterhackers.

Starting from the PLA profiles provided by Airwolf3d, I started learning the ins and outs of my new 3D printer. I quickly started to favor Slic3r and after experimenting with infill amounts and the number of perimeters, I was starting to get decent results.

first four prints on my Airwolf3D HD

One area that consistently failed on all of my parts was the tip of the nose. No matter what settings I changed, my noses always had a hole. To save time in solving this issue I created a new part to print that was just the tip of the nose. This enabled me to quickly print the problem area and try different approaches to solving it.

Problem with nose melting

After creating a video of the final layers of my nose, I was able to determine that the heat from my nozzle was melting the previously laid down layers because it was traveling in a small area.

The solution that seemed to work best for this type of issue was to print a secondary tower. The idea being, once a layer on the nose was completed, the nozzle would travel over to the tower which would leave the nose time to cool off before the next layer began.

printing a tower solved melting issue

Before and after tower prints

Everything I have printed so far

Now that my face print looked good and I solved my melting nose issue it was time to print a final high quality version of my face.

Mid print with tower part

Finished print with tower

All of my prints so far

Final Print

The final print came out looking great. There was a lot of detail that came through my digital model and I am now able to move forward with learning about post work on my 3d prints.

My first roll of filament on my Airwolf3D HD

Here is a photo I took after my first spool of filament ran out. That is quite quite a few prints! You can see I ended up printing nine heads (a few failed right off the bat). Nine noses and 16 calibration parts that I designed myself. I'll create a separate post talking about my calibration prints and my results with them at a later time.