I got to know my machine UM2 and learned a lot about printing by making my costume this year. Of course there were mistakes and workarounds where I had to look up on-line and improvise quickly.
adhesives and surface treatments:
| Glue | SCIGRIP Assembly Adhesive for glueing pieces together. This product has slight viscidity within few minutes of applying. It’s liquid enough to pour into small details but slight resistance to adjust pieces while settling. After it sets, very strong bonds and easy to sand. |
| Putty | Super Mend. I used to fill in slightly dented area from overhang to be solid. Medium viscidity and works like icing when it’s soft. Once it sets, very very strong and you have to use 60-80 grit sandpaper for starting. |
| Sanding | 3M sanding sheets and flexible sanding sheets. I wore mask and protective glasses while sanding. flexible sanding sheets are comfortable to hold. |
| Painting | Good and even priming is the key to final paint to stick. I used Rust-Oleum primer 2-3 coatings (3 cans total for this costume). Since I cannot stand petroleum based paints the final coloring was done with Liquitex acrylic and acrylic putty for small area patch ups. |
pros & cons of a no-fill interior:
| Dent | PLA is know to absorb moisture. My real OMG moment was when I was drying an arm piece under direct sun after applying the paint to dry. PLA absorbed the moisture and hot hair expanded the plastic. Of course cool down caused retraction of the surface due to no-infill structure. Emergency patch work was done with epoxy. |
| Bad calibration | Different PLA brands have different printing result, even with reputable brands. I knew I would be risking the weak surface without infills but most of parts came out strong due to convex-concave shape. Bad printing surface calibration resulted a very flexible surface. |
| Unstable model orientation | If the base of the printing object is unevenly layered, should be aborted right away… I let go for entire hours and at the end the result was terrible. Also I had to retry with a different model orientation that I could hide bad overhangs. |
