Benz-Mgebrov 3d Printing Test #2

1/100 scale Benz-Mgebrov armoured car.
Approximately 55mm long and 16mm to the top of the hull-drum.

Here's the same model as in my last post, arranged differently on the print-bed, and exactly as it came off the printer without any clean-up at all.

As I expected, I got much cleaner detail on the wheel hubs by standing them vertically rather than printing them lying face-up. There's still quite perceptible banding on the sloped surfaces, but by setting Cura to print the top surfaces in lines rather than concentric rings, and by enabling ironing, I've ended up with a much smoother top to the drum of the hull.

It's a pity that I couldn't also iron the sloping panels, but even so they're not too bad. This was printed at a 0.12mm layer height, and I could go as low as about 0.8, which would make those surfaces cleaner, but would also increase printing times considerably.

The hull front has lifted a bit up off the bed as the PLA has warped slightly. That doesn't matter much for this model, but it is an issue that will need to be considered for the future. The Cura slicing profile I used printed the model solid, rather than using an infill, which I don't think is either necessary or desirable for this sort of thing, as it increases the thermal stresses on the model substantially. It might not be an issue if the hull was printed vertically instead of horizontally, but I suspect that all it achieved in this case was to increase the printing time a bit. Printing it vertically would probably give me cleaner surfaces on the sloped panels too, as it has on the turret, but I'd lose the benefit of ironing on the drum top.

There's a bit of stringing; I could probably do with tinkering with my retraction settings a bit, but for the moment I'm fairly satisfied with the results. It's not yet perfect, but I'm coming closer.