There is a New 3D Printer in the Shipyard

 My new Creality Ender 5 Pro 3D printer arrived s week ago and I have spent every day since playing with it. I haven't painted or rigged a thing. 

It was packed extremely well and went together fast. The wiring was a cinch, made easy by wire labels and color coding.

Once I had it in place I watched a few YouTube videos  to get familiar with it and started playing. The biggest hurdle was all the prints would break away from the bed before they were finished. I kept leveling and releveling. I used copious amounts of glue stick. I used matting tape. I even tried hair spray. Nothing worked. But I finally figured out I wasn't adjusting the nozzle close enough to the bed, and I was set at too high a speed with too much cooling for the first couple of layers, and my lines were too thin for those first couple of layers. Once I fixed all of that, I haven't had a failure since!

This thing produces beautiful quality prints. I downloaded the free Cura 4.8.8 slicer program and using the Super quality setting, the prints are close to resin quality. The downside is that at this setting the prints take much longer to complete, like hours longer! But it's worth it for the result. The Standard setting is darned good too!

The picture above is the Swedish 40 gun Bellona class frigate Venus by Henry Turner. The gray one on top was printed at Standard line setting of 0.2 MM. The black one on the bottom was printed at the Super line setting of 0.12 MM.

There really isn't that much noticeable  difference. There is a bit more pronounced stepping on the quarter deck and the stem and stern details aren't quite as crisp. I would be satisfied with Standard if that was the best it could do, and it IS much faster. But...

Now that I have the method down I can set the print, watch it through the first few layers, raise the speed and cooling back up, then go off and do something else for however many hours and come back to a beautifully printed ship, or two. These two Elizabeth class 74s came off after 5 hours this evening. (Also by Henry Turner).

Then yesterday I stopped at the post office and there was a package waiting for me. It was a ship order I had placed with Simon Mann for six of his resin ships. Keep in mind I placed this order before I decided to order a printer, and with all the excitement, I had completely forgotten about it.  When I opened it up there were nine additional "misprint" ships Simon threw in. He says he figured I could fix them. (I looked and I can)

These are the "misprints"

And then my friend Pete in the UK informs me today that he posted another package of FDM prints to me as well. What have I created?

My 1/700 3D printed ship pile is fast approaching the size of my metal 1/1200 ship lead pile. There is no way I will live long enough to complete the ships I have, and here I am with a new printer, printing more ships. This would kind of be a nightmare, if it wasn't so much fun!

I don't know when I will do anymore rigging!