With just days left to submit sculptures for the Shemer Art Center‘s 3D art show “Materialize,” I started printing my first sculpture – and my first piece at all – on Cereberus 3D’s Gigante printer.
This monster is 8 feet tall. It can print an item 5 feet tall and 34″ in diameter, but time was an issue.
I scaled up and queued up my sculpture Simple Planes to 40 inches tall. As soon as Steve Graber and his chief scientist, Hugh, were satisfied that everything was running well, I hit the “print” button.
It was 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. My host program, Repetier, said the print would take 33 hours, which means it would be done about 2 a.m. Monday morning. The photographer was coming at 1:30 Monday afternoon to have the photos in time to submit for the show before the Wednesday deadline. Everything had to go perfectly.
I printed the sculpture upside down because the top is larger in area than the base, and used the “Vase” setting, which leaves the inside hollow and “top” open. In this case, the top would be the bottom – I knew I could add a base.
The Gigante was almost silent as it printed – we had to walk into the room and look at it to make sure it was actually printing. It laid about 3 layers as its base (what would become the top), then started creating the sides ….
And up it went ….
The stripe about midway in this photo is a mystery. It appears to be from contaminated filament. In my world, that sometimes leads to unanticipated beauty, as it did in this case: a gradiant aquamarine stripe circles the sculpture.
Finally, the finished print:
Simple Planes With Aquamarine Stripe – PLA plastic, 40″ x 13″ x 8″, 2014
The print actually took about 23.5 hours because I played with the speed a bit. The printer can print about twice as fast, but there are a few tweaks needed before we’d even attempt that.
For now, I’m pleased we’ll make that deadline. Thank you, Steve and Jacob Graber of Cereberus 3D for a heroic sprint to the finish.