After several weeks, I have completed the 3rd floor of the Watchtower project – at least the printing stage. Once I am able to print the roof section, then I will be disassembling everything for painting, before re-assembling and gluing the pieces.
The design is supposed to be modular sections – different pieces that lock into each other. But once assembled, several of the sections are a bit flimsy even with the proper clips. Since I don’t really intend to rebuild the pieces into different configurations, I don’t really need to be able to separate them – thus the glue.
However, midway thru the project I realized that if I was going to glue all the pieces anyway, then I could just print the entire floor section as a single piece. A bit of Tinkercad effort, and some careful alignment and importing of the various pieces, and I can create a large single model for each section. Its a long print, but certainly shorter than printing each piece separately.
However, with the large print comes an increased chance for a failure – meaning a lot of wasted material. As such, I simply do not trust my current printer. With the layer shifts, and other issues, I am not going to risk the time and cost on such an attempt. Once I can replace the printer, then I will be much more confident.
