Hi there!
My first ever thread on /MakerTale and one of my first prints as well! During my starting week at 3D Hubs, the red beauty named Big Builder came back from the repairman and was begging for a testprint.
For those who don’t know the Big Builder, it is a Dual-Feed PLA printer with the ability to print 644mm high. There is also a cool gradient option available, but I will show that to you next time.
The Big Builder Dual-Feed 3D Printer in the lab with Marvin on the printing bed for scale.
Set up the printer
So let’s talk about the print: since the Big Builder is really suitable for printing high objects, I wanted to print a replica of one of my fellow colleagues, @Luuk. The print is made with a professional 3D Scanning device and exported as an .stl. At first, the .stl file was uploaded in Cura and the printer & model settings were set.
Print Details
- Printer: Big Builder Dual-Feed
- Resolution 200 micron
- Temperature: 210c at first, adjusted to 220c during print
- Prints speed: 45 mm/s
- Fan speed: 100% at first, adjusted to 50% during print
- Heated Bed: No
- Surface adhesion: Tape
- Infill: 15%
- Material: Grey Universal Fibers PLA+ U3Dlive 1.75mm
- Slicing software: Cura
- Support: Yes
Settings pre-print, sliced with Cura.
Let’s print!
Since it was one of my first prints ever and the indicated duration of the print was over 25 hours (!!), you could imagine there were a couple of challenges to overcome. The size of the print can be quite challenging. Because of the size and some overhanging parts, support was added to the print with use of Cura.
Once the print started all went well but after approximately four hours of printing, I noticed some flaws starting to occur around the knee part of the body, they looked very shaky.
Close-up of the printed knee-area, the imperfections due to the low printing temperature can be seen.
I figured the imperfections and slight overextrusion problem could be solved by adjusting the temperature. An advantage of the Big Builder is that you can change settings during printing, so no need to stop the print and do it over. I changed the temperature from 210c to 220c and left the print going for some time. However, I still wasn’t satisfied with the rest of the print so I changed the fan speed from 100% to 50%, this gave a better result; the surface was smoother and the extrusion was spread more evenly.
After 25 hours of printing, the mini version of @Luuk was finally done. Some minor tweaking like removing the support was obviously necessary and the result was quite good. But, there is still lots of improvement possible.
It was really cool to work with the Big Builder and I am sure not finished with the printer yet ;), as said before, I am very interested in trying to get the gradient printing option to work. I hope this MakerTale gave you some insight in printing with the Big Builder!
If you got a question, please let me know 
Cheers,
Do
