@Silvrav What a nightmare, but it's done. Whittaker's Chocolate for scale.

That looks decent!

I have put it on hold for now as I started printing NYC. 46 tiles. Each tile is 15x15cm and takes about 6 hours.

Idea is to put it together and wall mount it for my partner as she loves NYC.

I also printed a key bowl for all my daily carry stuff

New home in man cave. Even with other objects to show scale, photos don't really get across the size. I'm glad my shelves are extra deep otherwise he'd have nowhere to live:

Going to make sure the next project has no sanding, gluing, or clamping required!

@Silvrav do you have a link to the NYC one you're doing? I'm unlikely to do it myself, but am interested in having a look because yours has come out nice and most of the ones I've seen have been little single plate prints.

Ill send you a PM @paul1977

That face hugger looks awesome on the shelf, with the tail wrapped around the books!

Silvrav:

 

Ill send you a PM @paul1977

 

That face hugger looks awesome on the shelf, with the tail wrapped around the books!

 

Thanks @Silvrav. Have a play with ironing settings in your slicer if you haven’t already. I’ve used it on a few prints, and with tweaking can give a smoother top surface than default settings, might be good for flat bits like on your Central Park tile. Adds a bit of time to the print though.

Are you printing that in PLA or PETG?

Paul1977:

 

Silvrav:

 

Ill send you a PM @paul1977

 

That face hugger looks awesome on the shelf, with the tail wrapped around the books!

 

 

Thanks @Silvrav. Have a play with ironing settings in your slicer if you haven’t already. I’ve used it on a few prints, and with tweaking can give a smoother top surface than default settings, might be good for flat bits like on your Central Park tile. Adds a bit of time to the print though.

 

Are you printing that in PLA or PETG?

 

Yip, I've looked at the ironing settings....to this tile it would've added jusy under 4 hours.....lol. I might print one during the night to see if its worth it. The current one is pretty good and smooth.

This is white PLA. Im playing with the idea to make the first few layers black so the rivers/water are black.

Silvrav:

 

Yip, I've looked at the ironing settings....to this tile it would've added jusy under 4 hours.....lol. I might print one during the night to see if its worth it. The current one is pretty good and smooth.

 

This is white PLA. Im playing with the idea to make the first few layers black so the rivers/water are black.

 

Looking at the comments a lot of people cut off the bottom few mm in the slicer so sea level doesn’t print at all, then mount it on a seperate black board. That way they don’t have the tile join lines on the water parts (would save filament too).

For my Bambu the default ironing settings were garbage and massively under extruded (looked worse than not ironing). So do some small test prints to get it dialled in before doing a full tile. 

I think I mentioned this earlier, but I've run into it again and it really annoys me....

Bambu spool-less refills are $5 cheaper than purchasing with the spool included. But requires $5.67 worth of filament to print a spool (that isn't nearly as sturdy as the official one), and some of their newer colours are only available as refills. So if you don't have spare spools it costs more to get these new colours and you end up with an inferior spool. Plus wear/tear and power from the 4 hours print time to make the spool.

To purchase a Bambu spool on its own (no filament) is an insane $24.15.

I don't understand the decision to make some filaments only available as refills.  I can only assume the profit margin is better, but it's very consumer unfriendly.

Rant over.

Paul1977:

 

I don't understand the decision to make some filaments only available as refills.  I can only assume the profit margin is better, but it's very consumer unfriendly.

 

Rant over.

 

Carrying 2 skus for one colour would cost them more in logistics and distribution.

Also I would be worried about batch differences if I was to get one with spool and then refills as they would not have been made at the same time. If they only do the refills then this should never be a problem if you need to get many spools to do a project.

richms:

 

Carrying 2 skus for one colour would cost them more in logistics and distribution.

 

Also I would be worried about batch differences if I was to get one with spool and then refills as they would not have been made at the same time. If they only do the refills then this should never be a problem if you need to get many spools to do a project.

 

Yeah, but you'd still have the option to buy just the refills if that's what you wanted.

Currently the only way to buy some of these filaments is in a manner that it is unusable without another purchase or printing a compatible part.

I have a stack of empty spools on the basis of maybe getting refills at some point.  However, I recently found that they are all glued together so unless I can somehow unglue the two halves, can't easily reload them without some sort of winder.

May wave the heat gun at one and see if that will soften the glue without destroying the spool.  Got sufficient plastic spools to test a few options.  

Most of the recent filament purchases seem to be on cardboard spools now.  Have yet to empty one to see if they can be reloaded.

geoffwnz:

 

I have a stack of empty spools on the basis of maybe getting refills at some point.  However, I recently found that they are all glued together so unless I can somehow unglue the two halves, can't easily reload them without some sort of winder.

 

May wave the heat gun at one and see if that will soften the glue without destroying the spool.  Got sufficient plastic spools to test a few options.  

 

Most of the recent filament purchases seem to be on cardboard spools now.  Have yet to empty one to see if they can be reloaded.

 

The Bambu ones are designed to be reusable, so can easily separate the halves then clip back together. But I haven't depleted an entire spool yet and still building a library of colours, so have had to print 3 spools so far for the few colours I've purchased that only come as refills.

For anyone interested, below is the one I've printed in PETG. It's doesn't use up too much filament and has built-in filament clips. But still annoyed I have to print it at all:

https://makerworld.com/en/models/893754-bambu-lab-reusable-refill-spool-143g#profileId-851052

I'm more annoyed at the trend towards paper spools since they shed stuff down into the printer that I try to keep dust free. Even running in a filament dryer the rolling of them makes dust that sticks to the filament.

Understand where you're coming from, but I've also got sympathy for Bambu's position. For waste minimisation, it's awesome that they drove the shift to reusable spools and offer refill-only options. You get (I think?) one free spool with the printer and another 4 (5?) with an AMS, so plenty to get started. $25 for another spool isn't peanuts, but it will definitely do way more than 5 refills and so will easily pay for itself. And then they even open sourced the model so you can print your own...

I suspect that the novel and exotic filament is probably mainly targeted at enthusiasts who alread have spools; selling a spool-in option could make those SKUs pretty slow to move and end up with waste. That said, offering a "add a spool for (say) another $10" sales option could reduce the SKUs even further.

I've seen generic reusable spools on the usual marketplaces for about half the price of genuine Bambu ones. Haven't tried these myself since I'm happy with the Bambu ones I have. But might be worthwhile investigating if you're in a bit of an edge usage scenario. 

What are you doing for a dry box to keep all those open spools as dry as possible?