Yeah, it’s hard. But do-able.
Wanted to give everyone a quick look at a draft of some 3D prints of the GS shell and some tips to get them to come out well. These are the originally released STL files. They are notoriously hard to print. I wanted to try them out anyway.
The shells are thin, and not a lot of mass in the walls leave it prone to warp. The really hard part is all the little bumps and ridges on the shell outsides prevents the surface ofromlaying flat, so you’re stuck with using a lot of support material. Here’s the end result for the top case.
It’s not bad. Left it raw so you can easily tell it’s 3D printed, but a little heat gun smoothing or sanding would give it a nice finish. The detail is good, but the fit is perfect. I didn’t experience any warping or distortion. What I did experience is with the existing STLs; I had to use a raft on the bed, and use a ton of support. Like 20min removing all the support out of this tiny shell levels of support. It left the inside a little rough. Again, a hot gun here would be great, but it’s on the inside, so I removed most of the mess and snapped the shell top onto the original GS molded plastic lego bottom shell. Snap, snap. Fit great. Even the small button locks work well with some high detail settings. Now that I have a successful draft, I’m trying out printing the top in some silver nGen material to rock on the system for a while.
Printing the bottom STL file was a failure. Not having a flat print surface is a real challenge. The inside looks great, but outside is rough/ugly and would be a challenge to finish correctly. I might try with different orientation soon. But I really just want to customize the top case for now, and keep the molded Lego back (no stl available yet for the Lego version).
Here’s the settings and materials of the print.
Printer: LulzBot Mini, heated bed
Material: Polymaker PLA
Support: yes, lots but thin (zig-zag 8%) + raft
Settings: 230C, 75% fan speed, 30ms speed, 90C bed, 0.18mm layer height, Infill 100%
That’s a bunch of boring stuff, but it might help someone having issues. Also, if anyone else is having success with original STL (especially the bottom piece), I love to see how they came out.
These old files are really only a stop gap until we have some new STLs and source files to print and modify. HAL, Godzil and team have already posted the Lightkey files, and cleaned and updated STLs for the case should be coming shortly on the STL Repo Thread.
https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/community-stl-repo/154/18?u=demomonkey
But I’m going to experiment with a few more materials, and see if I can’t perfect the difficult print until the new files arrive. Would love to have a carbon fiber or wood case to hold my new GS.
Anyone have any luck with their 3D prints? Or are we all waiting for nicer files?
