3d printing, builds, gaming, OpenForge, prints

Sewer Dungeon – Print Twelve

Posted by patricknevindwyer on

We’re building a dungeon. This is a project spanning lots of different prints, until we generate all of the tiles we need for the dungeon we have in mind. The prints are spread across:

Print Twelve – So Much Sluice

With rough drawings of the dungeon on paper, it’s time to start printing up various pieces in large quantities. This print is batches of sluice curves, straight pieces, deep pools, and other tiles I’ve already trialed and started to arrange into our dungeon.

For each batch, I’m printing 4 copies of a model per print. I’ve found that I can fit up to 12 2×2 dungeon tiles onto the print bed, but that has a high print failure rate, with filament near the edge of the bed having poor adhesion. I could probably push this up to 6 copies per print without negatively affecting the print error rate, but 4 copies per print puts each batch at right around 2-3 hours per print, which makes it easier to fit multiple prints into the day.

I’ve laid out the entire dungeon on paper in roughly the configuration I want, and have partially built out tiles for selected areas to gauge which pieces I need more of.

Most of the low profile tiles are quick to print, but the details pieces, like the bridges, and the taller pieces, like walls, take a long time to print. I think I’ve decided that I won’t be walling in the entire dungeon. Strategic places will get walled in as needed during play, like when line of sight and cover become an issue. Otherwise, the printing of walls and corner fill alone could take weeks.

By printing out 4-8 of most of the tile variants I’m using, I’ll very likely end up with extra tiles not used in the final layout, which is fine. It’ll take slightly longer over all to print, but makes managing all of the printing much, much easier.

When I sliced the convex curve tiles, I tried out a different fill pattern for the top and bottom layers, namely – the Hilbert Curve fill pattern. The default fill, which uses diagonal lines, creates a fairly smooth and regular surface. At the layer quality these tiles were printed at, the Hilbert Curve fill creates a noisy and somewhat incomplete surface. Small gaps between the space filling curve are evident.

While slicing the 1×3 floor tiles, I tried out the Octogram Spiral fill pattern for the top and bottom layers. The pattern isn’t visible on the top of the tiles,  but is definitely visible on the bottom. At this print resolution, the octagram spiral pattern may have better coverage, with fewer gaps, on the bottom of tiles.

 

Tiles Time (hh:mm) Filament (meters)
Print Per Total Actual Estimated Total Estimated Total
sewer_sluice_curved 4 4 2:35 2:04 2:35 19 19
sewer_sluice_straight 4 4 2:26 1:56 2:26 18.2 18.2
sewer_deep_sluice_straight_2x2 4 8 2:20 1:54 4:40 16.5 33
sewer_deep_sluice_curved_2x2 4 8 2:28 2:04 4:56 17.7 35.4
sewer_deep_pool_cross_e_2x2 4 8 1:27 1:16 2:54 10.2 20.4
sewer_deep_pool_curved_2x2 4 4 2:27 2:00 2:27 17.4 17.4
sewer_deep_pool_tee_a_2x2 4 8 1:51 1:36 3:42 13.4 26.8
sewer_deep_pool_cross_b_2x2 4 4 1:38 1:25 1:38 10.9 10.9
sewer_deep_pool_tee_b_2x2 4 4 2:01 1:40 2:01 13.7 13.7
sewer_deep_pool_tee_c_2x2 4 4 1:58 1:39 1:58 13.7 13.7
sewer_pipe_wall_1x1 4 4 2:39 2:00 2:39 16.5 16.5
sewer_deep_pool_curve_convex 4 4 3:07 2:16 3:07 20.5 20.5
sewer_floor_1x3 4 4 2:16 1:54 2:16 17 17
sewer_floor_1x2 4 4 1:25 1:15 1:25 11.1 11.1
sewer_deep_sluice_tee_2x2 !! (queued up, not on SD card) 4 4 1:57 1:43 1:57 14 14
42 hours 41 minutes 288.6 meters

So in the course of this print we made 76 tiles with 288.6 meters of filament. Working with a spool length of ~400 meters per kilogram for ABS, and an average spool cost of $15, this print cost about $10.82, or around 14 cents and 33 minutes per tile. Not bad.

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