Since I have this massive 5 headed monster of a 3D printer in my workshop that can print in not only 5 different colors but different materials, I can’s stop brainstorming ways that this could be utilized. One idea that had been bouncing around in my cranium was that I could produce really cool looking faux stained glass with this machine by printing a transparent material for the “glass” and an opaque material for all the framing and outlines.
I started off with this concept, modeled and rendered in fusion360. It’s pretty basic in my opinion, for a gothic design, but I didn’t want to waste a ton of design time if the whole thing didn’t work.
What’s crazy is that each different piece you see there is actually a different piece within fusion. This model has so many parts, it’s kind of a headache.
Here’s the lamp, after importing into prusaslicer and splitting the model into parts. The colors you see here are the default designations within the software before I started painting it. The process of selecting each one and determining the color was painstaking and slow, but ultimately worked just fine.
What I love about the XL is the lack of waste compared to an AMS system. If you look at my design, each layer can have up to 5 different colors, which on a Bambu machine would have meant at least 4 swaps with a “purge poop” and a wipe tower. There would be more waste than there is lamp shade! On the XL all you have is that wipe tower in the back, which is mostly hollow.
You can download this lamp on Printables if you want to tinker on your own.
One downside to the XL however, is that there is a possibility for a misalignment. In the picture above, you can see a bright line on the green and blue rectangles that are center of the image. This is because there is a tiny gap there, maybe half a mm, that isn’t in the design. This could be due to belt tension, and now I have to troubleshoot it. I would not have this issue with the Bambu AMS.
Here is the final lamp, and you can see that gap more prominently. You can also see how awesome the effect is! I’m super happy with this.
For this test concept print, I didn’t have any transparent materials. Luckily though, within PrusaSlicer you can determine individual print settings for each piece! This allowed me to set the “glass” pieces to have no infill whatsoever, allowing for better light transmission. The effect worked great for red and yellow, not so great for blue and green. I think this issue is moot, because really the best solution is to print the glass in a transparent material and I can do that!
Over all I’m very happy with how this turned out. I would love to revisit this with a much more ornate design. However, like many makers out there, the steam I have quickly dissipates once I can proves something is possible, so I guess we’ll see if I can muster the motivation to push this to a more impressive result.
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