JUNE 9th 2019

This month's meeting was hosted at a club member's home in Welland.  The theme of the meeting was 3D Liquid Resin Printing with a demonstration by Brandon

Brandon set up his 3D printer outside so any fumes could be safely exhausted.  He has a home built exhaust duct with a duct fan that he uses in his apartment that he had brought to show the group.

Brandon has show cased a number of items he had printed over the last few months so we were all familiar with what it could do.

First he showed and described to us SKETCHUP, the modelling program he uses.  The older versions of this were a free download but they are presently starting to charge for this program.  The 3D model is saved as an STL file for the next step.

He then showed us a 3D filament type printer (JG Aurora A5)  and described this system.  It uses a 1.75 mm PLA or ABS material filament on a spool that feeds into a hot nozzle (approximately 200°C) and extrudes it onto a hot plate (approximately 60°C).  The hot plate moves front to back as the nozzle moves side to side and rises to deposit new layers to build or print the item from the plate upwards.

Brandon showed and described to us the free Ultimaker CURA SLICER program that is used to change the STL file into a language the printer can use to print the slices or layers of the model.

We then went outside to see his 3D Resin Printer at work.  As described in our March blog, his is an SLA UV acrylic liquid resin 3D printing machine made by Any Cubic Photon. This printer does not operate hot.   The liquid resin is poured into a containment reservoir  and the head moves up and down approximately every 7 seconds as the part is built up in layers hanging from the underside of the head.  Individual ultraviolet (UV) light beams are turned on/off to harden 20 micron size droplets of resin onto the underside of the head of the machine where the slicer program tells it to build the part.  As it dunks new droplets and layers are built downwards from the head (upside down).  Because of the extreme accuracy of the UV lighting it can recreate much finer detail than the earlier mentioned filament style printer.

Brandon explained that the resin chemical should be handled with considerable care.  He wore gloves throughout the process and the prints were not handled with bare hands until after a 20 minute soak in rubbing alcohol followed by a clean water rinse. 

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Phil M. had brought in his model of the Spanish (Basque) Whaling Galleon San Juan, considered to be the oldest Canadian Ship wreck.

The San Juan had sunk off the shore of Labrador in the Straits of Belle Isle in 1565.  She was 90 feet long and had three masts.

There has been considerable progress since we had last seen her.  Phil explained that all wood used in his model was Swiss Pear and the finish used determined the colour.  He had used clear coat on the deck planks.  The actual ship had hardwood (oak) below a particular elevation where strength was required and softwood (fir) above that elevation to reduce weight.  He decided to leave the port side open to allow the frame work and interior to be viewed.

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David A. brought in a booklet he had supplied to people that took part in the Admiralty Models Workshop he held at Queenston (near Niagara Falls in Ontario) last weekend where he had taught Carving Techniques for Ship Modellers.

Alan had participated in the workshop and showed club members the Plasticine maquette (a hand made 3D model of the parts to be carved) he had made that was to be used as a reference to help visualize the height, depth and shadowing effects before any chisel touched any carving medium.

We had then carved the items into high density foam (to simulate wood) at half the scale of the model.

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