Print of the month January '18

Welcome to the first monthly award for print of the month! This/(last?) months highly sought after accolade goes to.... drumroll please..... Qaazars beautiful model of Wheatley from Portal 2!

Wheatley from Portal 2 by Qaazar on Thingiverse.

For those of you who don't know Wheatley is one of the main characters from Valve's great game Portal 2, voiced by Stephen Merchant. The character is immensely charming and funny and I really grew to like him as the game progressed. Even when at the end *SPOILER* he turns evil and takes GLaDOS' place as the overseer of your trials in the game.

Wheatley in the game.

The model is designed to be fitted with electronics to allow the lens to light up with a blue LED but for this print I decided I wasn't too bothered with that and just wanted a mini Wheatley for my shelves. Who knows, maybe if I revisit this print I'll go the whole hog and do the electronics as well, but that would be a post for another time.

Print settings

Nozzle - 0.4mm

Layer Height - 0.15mm
Cetus settings - Fine with support

Filament used

3DFilaprint glow in the dark sample for the lens
Kickstarter Mattforge in white for everything else

Time taken

Total of around ten hours

The eyelids move!!

Issues

The eyelids(?) kept coming off of the raft during printing and had to be reprinted a few times until I got it to work.

Learning points

The Mattforge filament, whilst looking great, really doesn't adhere to support structure well. Now while this makes for removing the support at the end of the print super easy, it also means that there is more of a chance that the model can come off of the raft during printing, causing the print to fail.

I think using this filament for miniatures or other items with lots of complicated support would really allow it to shine, but for small delicate items with a small surface area in contact with the print bed it means there is a high risk of failure.

For the smaller items mentioned, the 3DFilaprint filament works really well with great support adhesion.

In summary, this model is beautifully designed, easy to print and easy to assemble. If you're looking for a Wheatley model to print, you need look no further than this one.

Anyway, see you next week and see you next month for February's POTM!

Troez.

Comments

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