Ask your doctor today if Bowl O' Plastic is right for you! The next step in my #Thrixels madness is seamlessly joining multiple panels together to support larger mosaics. Here's a test with no extra clearance - not only is there a gap, it's exacerbated by the tiles pushing the thin substrate walls outwards, so those will have to be cut away in the next attempt.
That metal pin is from the #GravisGamePad project - I will need to find a different "dowel" material.
@3dprinting okay, with a tiny (0.1mm!) tweak to the Lego-like part's diameters, they actually do click together and feel like Lego - at least the first couple of times, but that should be enough for final assembly of a finished workpiece, so I'm calling that part done.
I've also embiggened and squared up the top surface of the tiles (also tested a larger rounded-off design) - now I get to tune out (as much as possible) the weird inset wiggle in between the edges of each square. #3DPrinting
@3dprinting I am rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns on tweaks to this (if I'm not already well past it). There's a couple more tiny changes I want to try to fill in the gaps in between tiles, but at this point I'm playing with literal fractions of millimetres here, and some time tomorrow I'm going to remind myself nobody else will ever look as close at these things as I am doing now.
Perfection is the enemy of good, as they say!
@3dprinting two changes here: two perimeter layers on the top surface rather than one, and concentric ironing added. The former seems to have made no difference except maybe to make the grid line up worse, but the ironing has flattened the top surface and eliminated the streets-and-lanes effect of previous versions.
I'm going to try two more things before calling this "good enough": printing the last layers at 50% speed, and bowing out the sides on the top layers very slightly. #3dprinting
@3dprinting okay, but that's like... basically perfect? New version on the left, old on the right in the photo.
Filament coming out of a round nozzle is never going to turn a 90 degree angle flawlessly, so the corner gaps will be there no matter what I do, but the side gaps are basically gone, and the biggest visual inconsistency now is the height of individual tiles, which A) is impossible to see head-on, and B) has no chance in hell of being tuned out in 3D printing this decade. #3dprinting
Whether you're into #3DPrinting, or a fan of #BlueMonday by #NewOrder, you'll want to check this video out. This is a fully 3D printed tile mosaic system that can be extended seamlessly, with any colours you can print the tiles with.
Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UazUBZNo9vs
My video shooting and editing skills are rudimentary at best, but I think it tells the story I wanted to tell - let me know if you'd want to see more videos like this!
13 hours to print less than 60 grams of PLA? Sure, why not! Today's the day I embark on the final proof-of-concept test for making large #Thrixels mosaics, and this print is two of the four base pieces that will be combined to make up the whole. Now taking guesses as to what classic bit of pixel art I will be recreating here!
Months of design work, most of a week with the printer completely occupied, and all I have to show for it is this dopey fish silhouette.
Another couple of days, though, and this has the potential to become my #3DPrinting magnum opus.
In the spirit of sharing failures as well as successes, I wasted an entire printer-day by rushing to set up a whole plate of #Thrixels in the morning and copied and pasted the wrong model - I nearly ended up with a thousand individual *holes* instead of mosaic tiles, which would've been totally useless.
Not a big waste of filament - if I'd let it finish, it would've been 70g or so - but losing a day of time on the project (I wasn't around to clean/reset) is irritating.
This is going to be dope. So far I've had one tiny failure so far with this process, and that cost me about ten tiles on a plate of about 900, so it's pretty reliable - I'm sure I've lost more by dropping them on the floor trying to pour them into the sandwich bags I'm using to sort and store them.
I've also printed my own little removal tool for them - it's just a hollow bar that slips over a row of tiles, and gives me leverage to snap the whole row away at once.
Substantial, visible progress has been made today. This particular image requires 2,561 green #Thrixels, of which I've printed about a third, but every other colour is now in place.
Unlike with the QR code, where I went line by line, I'm doing the outline and all other details first before simply filling the rest of the space with green.
The result of this strategy is that, as of today, it looks like someone chroma-keyed a #dopefish. Should be finished next weekend!
Tried something today that really didn't work. At the corners where the base pieces meet, I cut out one part of the substrate so they can join seamlessly, and thought I'd try that throughout the substrate. This takes 30% less material (a few grams) and 30% less time (hours, on a big one) to print, but results in a base that's surprisingly hard to line the tiles up in, and even harder to get a consistent surface in the end, so that's a dead-end idea.
I did finish assembling the #dopefish though, so that's a win. I'm not thrilled with how visible the seams are - I think the larger a single base piece is, the more it will warp up in the middle, so what you're seeing is the confluence of multiple warped edges. It should be less visible once pressed into a frame and viewed in better light, and future projects will use smaller base pieces to minimise this.
@lenzj thanks!
The assembly process is why I'm doing this - it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle I've designed myself. Plus it's not just dropping bits into place, they click in with some force and you really need human finger dexterity to find the right fit each time.
Printing them in place is possible, if I bought three more AMSes for my X1, but that defeats the purpose - I want to make things and then make something out of them, not make a thing to make something for me.
@timixretroplays @[email protected] "I'm sure I've lost more by dropping them on the floor trying to pour them into the sandwich bags I'm using to sort and store them."
If only you had a device that you could use to create a scoop or funnel to safely put the Thrixels (that is what you called them right? I am still waking up) into a baggie. That would be so awesome. But alas, it is not meant to be.
World's smallest and most complex Go board.
@dlehman oh, and the last problem to solve is finishing and framing. Most tiles sit very snuggly, but turning a mosaic upside down will cause some to fall out. Brushing some clear-drying glue over it is one option. I plan to get clear acrylic laser cut to form a frame to surround each workpiece I finish.
This is what I mean about sharing meaningfully - there's no point to the usual "neat! STL?" without planning start to finish, unless all you want is a very niche #3DPrinting torture test.
One can easily overtune a profile and start hulicination changes and umperfections. The secret is to know and recognize the capabilities and limits of the manufacturing process and exploit its weirdness.
Tim 🎮
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