At the end of the last blog I said I was going to try and 3D print a lever frame. I knew that this was probably going to be at the extreme end of what the printer could handle. The results were promising with a few issues.

There seem to be a couple of issue, firstly the levers appear to have been attracted to each other by the surface tension of the resin. In most cases the bulk of the lever was actually printed correctly but as they came out of the printer the levers were stuck together. Secondly the very tops of the lever appear to have lost the plot slightly, on several of the levers there was a distinct step where half way up the handle of the lever.

I can see a couple of options, I could try and add some support between the levers but I think this would be a pain remove, possibly almost impossible. The other option would be to print the levers separately and make the base with some holes to glue them into.

I tried to break and re-seat the handles on the worst offending, the result wasn't too bad.  I tried the frame in the box, this photograph is greatly magnified.

I did a couple of other prints at the same time, the platform face includes a number of tie-bars to stop it falling down. I was able to draw these up, they are about 5mm in diameter.

Finally I also printed a sack of potatoes off the Thingiverse,

While all this was going on I went into the arboriculture business and finished off some trees and bushes. I have quite a thicket to plant now.

David