New Forest Observatory ®

Came into the study this morning to find a finished Sierpinski pyramid courtesy of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 plus. Superb quality print and I am amazed at this printer’s capabilities.

Just 12 hours to go on this 86-hour print. Keep everything crossed that it continues smoothly to the end.

I recently purchased the ELEGOO Neptune 4 Plus 3D printer in a Black Friday deal at a ridiculously low price. I have been wanting a larger print-volume printer for quite a long while now, and as the Neptune 4 plus offers a 320mm x 320mm print bed with a 385mm print height, then this was the printer for me!

Assembly, bed-levelling and first test print were carried out in just a few hours and it was very straightforward indeed. I have seen it mentioned that the Neptune 4 Plus is not a beginner’s printer. I completely disagree, and it was a way easier introduction to 3D printing than my first (build it yourself) printer which was an ANET A6.

My first (test) print was the flower pot that came on the USB stick that came with the printer. It printed out perfectly, first time, with no tweaking necessary. I was amazed.

Not being one to hang about I went straight into printing a Sierpinski pyramid, 200mm on a side, and a 4-day print, as a test “ordeal by fire” of the new printer. I started printing on Friday afternoon and it is now Sunday afternoon, so 2 days of printing so far, with 2 more days to go. Why is the pyramid only 200mm on the base when the baseplate is 320mm across? Because I didn’t have enough filament on the reel to go for the full size print. You can see the progress so far in the image at top.

I knew (of course) that large volume models were going to need a lot of filament, but I wasn’t sure quite how much until I started slicing them. A 4th order Menger Sponge at 0.2mm resolution and measuring 295mm on a side will require just under 5kg of filament, that’s a lot of filament (push ups for those in the know). Fortunately ELEGOO also produces 3kg and 5kg rolls of PLA filament, so I can source enough filament, on a single roll, for these projects, but there is going to be a big unknown here as to whether the printer can cope. 5kg of mass is a HUGE amount for a bedslinger to chuck around!! Will it even cope? And if it does cope, will the resolution go to pot?? We’ll soon see when I get the next project underway I guess. Fingers crossed everybody.

Just came back from the dog walk tonight and took a look at the pinhole camera on the side of the house before going in. I don’t believe this!! Once again a bird has decided to peck through the Aluminium foil with the pinhole in it. Extremely annoying, and absolutely no idea why this has happened twice in a row now when it has never happened before. O.K. so I have to replace the Aluminium foil with a piece of drinks can with a pinhole in it, but why after all these years are birds suddenly taking an interest in the pinhole camera?