Hello all,
During the last few days I have been chasing a ghost and I’ve been able to track him down, let me explain.
Lately, I guess since the last update on the equipment, I have been having a lot of issues printing certain parts.
As you can imagine, the parts to be printed require a structure from the bottom so that they can build up layer by layer. I had issues of certain parts of the model with supports not attaching to the actual base of the part, you can see an example below:
These are the catering truck interiors for the Mercedes cabin.
On example 1, you can see two of the supports snapped right where the body part starts.
On the example 2, the supports did not pass through the height of the body part, only one portion in the center did.
The third example was a total disaster with supports barely reaching up to the body and thus not being a support “column” for the part (even so, it came out quite well).
I was suspecting this since some days ago, it appeared that everything failed when there was a crossing with the main part designed.
Upon inspecting the resulting file in the slicer, nothing weird was to be seen, everything seemed perfect, the model was also seen perfectly within the 3D software, so there was something invisible messing with the parts.
I have been using newer software to see if preparing the parts for printing with that software could solve the issues, but to my surprise, the software itself showed me that there were structural issues and holes within those parts even though they were not visible to the eye.
To sum up, a combination of both, primitive 3D software and my not-so-accurate skills while designing those parts in an ancient software, lead to several problems that only happened recently and on specific parts, I guess due the firmware update which may have made this problem more sensitive.
I am lucky in a way to have made the move to a CAD based software, so a lot of the functions I was doing are now prepared, effective and quicker.
The models that have been affected by this were the pushback trucks and the catering truck. This issue only appeared in the cabins and not always, since some files printed fine, others did not, hence my guess about the temperatures as well.
I have been able to solve it by making a new cabin for the F59. These corrections mean that a clone of the cabin is done, but this time it is done in the new software and without the invisible structural errors.
I will see what are the next ones that will require this fix, for the moment I also remade the F396 cabin just to be sure as it also displayed several structural errors in the initial file.
This should not affect the restocking because the root of the problem was found and it was quite difficult because it was a problem that was invisible, but I am glad that I finally found it.
This leads me to give a restocking date of January 28th 2022 for the following items:
- F59 towbar pushback truck.
- F110 towbar pushback truck.
- F210 towbar pushback truck.
- A320 towbars.
- Widebody towbars.
- Catering truck Mallaghan CT6000.
Right now I have about half of the units I wanted completed for the towbars, around 10 each and would try to increase the quantities during the next two weeks.
The catering currently is at about 14 units, but will try to make a few more.
That is all for now, unfortunately all those sudden issues made things slower for me to release the B787-9 cargo holds and the F396 pushback as I predicted for the end of the month, it may take me a little longer but both items are certainly on their final stages, as I am doing a final test fitting with the cargo hold ceilings and ultimating the parts of the F396.
I will try to show some other stuff during this weekend or next week, which hopefully will be a little bit more interesting than the present update.
Best wishes,
Guillem