buildable-stick-system/docs/printing-and-materials.md

Printing and Materials

bss's random thoughts and notes on the actual printing of the Buildable Stick System.

Printing Settings

My preferred settings are 3 wall loops with 20% gyroid sparse infill. This gives the models a bit more weight and strength against bowing forces, but something more default, like 2 wall loops, 15% grid sparse infill, is fine and does not lead to a weak enclosure.

Working With Flatness

A lot of the pieces are long and flat, so I recommend really dialing in your printer settings. The frame pieces make corner curling of the frame less of a problem, but you may still get it on the panels and the beveled frame pieces.

Bottom Layer Notes

Considering the visible layer (usually, the bottom layer) pattern is ideal. Monotonic prints fast but creates long, uniform lines that create reflection patterns on long, flat surfaces. This can be especially distracting for the top panels and their decorative plates, since they're what you're looking at 90% of the time, and the holes break up a perfect pattern, making the long lines stand out even more.

• Top panels: using a non-uniform pattern reduces if not eliminates the problem of the surface catching the light, but for some patterns, it may come at the expense of time. Other patterns may improve beyond monotonic, but hilbert curve seems to be the gold standard.
• Circle-centric decorative plates: don't use complex patterns like Archimedean chords on decorative plates, as they seem to have issues with filling curves and you still want to try to maximize contact with walls. Concentric is great here if you dial it in.

The concentric pattern is a good default and prints awesome parts, with the only exception being the top panels, which benefit from using a Hilbert curve initial layer pattern instead of concentric.

Materials

Some notes on PLA brands, usages, etc.

Bambu Lab PLA

Basic

• In general, nice texture, but under direct light, you can see a bit of the infill pattern through the walls. Not super distracting, but it's there.

White

• Walls are practically translucent, you can almost always see the infill. 3 wall loops and a varying infill pattern definitely help here.
• Looks perfectly good for thin things like the Neutrik plates, decorative pieces, that kind of thing.

Matte

• I don't like the texture as much, but they do produce nice non-primary color colorways, and you don't see the infill.
• Seems like their plastic treatment leaves some plate residue, so be better about cleaning it or you'll get ghosts.

Hatchbox PLA

• Blue: very blue. Wife likes it.
• White: more opaque than the Bambu PLA mentioned above, makes a pretty decent (still slightly translucent) frame.