PRINTING THE FILES
Okay, with the shopping list out of the way, let's get into building this thing. First job is to print all the essential parts which I printed with a layer height of 0.3mm which saves time - especially as we will be smoothing the hell out of them. I also used a brim for the larger parts to help prevent lifting from the print bed. The main body in particular is quite a long print and because of its shape, it needs A LOT of support material for best results:
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I use Cura as my software and I find disabling the 'Support interface' option essential, as leaving this on tends to fuse the support to the walls of the model . Turn it off and you should be able to pull the support away from the walls. This is a bit of a laborious job, but you can get there in the end using pliers to pull it all out bit by bit. This does create a lot of waste, but the end result is nice:
![Image]()
![Image]()
The face of the mini-cyclotron comes as two parts. Be aware that the main triangular section is not perfectly symmetrical, so I have included an arrow on the inside that denotes the top corner.
![Image]()
![Image]()
Flip it over in this orientation and super-glue the ring to the front, making sure to position it as central to the holes as possible:
![Image]()
For the base of the thrower, the arm brace needs to be recessed into it by about 5mm. To allow this, the base has a curved section that the brace will sit into. This curved section should be facing down when you print it which means the support material may make the walls around the mounting holes quite weak. To remedy this, I have extended the solid walls around the holes for extra strength, but these should be trimmed using flush cutters. The first photo here shows a square recess from an earlier version of my model, but you get the idea:
![Image]()
Okay, with the shopping list out of the way, let's get into building this thing. First job is to print all the essential parts which I printed with a layer height of 0.3mm which saves time - especially as we will be smoothing the hell out of them. I also used a brim for the larger parts to help prevent lifting from the print bed. The main body in particular is quite a long print and because of its shape, it needs A LOT of support material for best results:
I use Cura as my software and I find disabling the 'Support interface' option essential, as leaving this on tends to fuse the support to the walls of the model . Turn it off and you should be able to pull the support away from the walls. This is a bit of a laborious job, but you can get there in the end using pliers to pull it all out bit by bit. This does create a lot of waste, but the end result is nice:
The face of the mini-cyclotron comes as two parts. Be aware that the main triangular section is not perfectly symmetrical, so I have included an arrow on the inside that denotes the top corner.
Flip it over in this orientation and super-glue the ring to the front, making sure to position it as central to the holes as possible:
For the base of the thrower, the arm brace needs to be recessed into it by about 5mm. To allow this, the base has a curved section that the brace will sit into. This curved section should be facing down when you print it which means the support material may make the walls around the mounting holes quite weak. To remedy this, I have extended the solid walls around the holes for extra strength, but these should be trimmed using flush cutters. The first photo here shows a square recess from an earlier version of my model, but you get the idea:
Statistics: Posted by EctoLabs — May 21st, 2024, 10:31 am