Finishing tip: How to ensure a flat sanded surface
Aircraft Carrier by Tasslehoff_Burrfoot
My first thought when seeing the above picture of Tasslehoff_Burrfoot‘s Aircraft Carrier1 was, “What amazing Z axis resolution!” After reading the description of this thing it became clear he had printed the two halves vertically to minimize warping as the ABS cooled. I’ve finished lots of printed parts with an exacto knife, putty knife, pliers, and sandpaper – but I had never thought to use sandpaper as Tasslehoff suggests:
Sand down the two conjoining pieces to get a better fit, best way to get perfectly flat is to place a piece of sandpaper on a table and put a piece of 2×4 down perpendicular to the table. Then place the flight deck against the wood and sand down. Same thing with the flight deck. This is if you do not have a heated build platform.
Sanding the printed object on a flat piece of wood results in a flat piece of sandpaper. Unfortunately, I’ve created unintentionally uneven edges on prints by just using sandpaper without any supportive material underneath.
Thanks for the pro-tip Tasslehoff!
| Tagged with | aircraft carrier, dragonlance, finishing, kender, protip, sanding, sandpaper, tasslehoff burrfoot | One comment |
One Comment so far
johng
If you need it really flat, then tape the paper to a sheet of thick float glass. Also, moving the part in a figure 8 seems to help me get it very flat. Continually moving it backwards and forward will round it off a bit. Search google for ‘lapping heatsink’ for some good instructions on it.