Parametric vessel update

This is a rather long post because of everything that happened with this piece, which in hindsight probably wasn't that bad, but it sure was frustrating.

For the parametric vessel mold, I decided to go with the light blue vessel (in the image above) because the teal vessel that I was thinking of doing have many undercuts that were going to require more than a 2 part mold if I didn't want to alter it significantly. However, this vessel provided a challenge in the form of very minor undercuts, strange programing glitches and printing problems.

The first issue with this pieces had very small undercuts towards the top of the vessel that were very hard to spot until the vessel had the 2D outline after being sliced in half. I want to thank Bryan immensely for his help with fixing this nightmare piece. The vessel seemed to resist the BooleanUnion function and required a lot of minor adjustments that had the outline being extruded, and the vessel being Split from its undercuts. Some time later (probably 30min to an 1hr), it was ready to have the plate outline done, and converted to an STL for Slic3r. 

But it didn't seem to be done with its fun. After I had converted the file into an STL and was about to export it into a g-code, I remembered that I forgot the 2.15mm extrusion to allow it to be flush with the acrylic plate. It was also too long at 190mm for the acrylic plate (with the 10mm pour opening tolerance that was added), but that was a minor adjustment by squishing it slightly. The next problem for this vessel was that it somehow deleted a very small section out of the one side. 

I have no idea how that happened, but when I made a copy of the full vessel and sliced it in half, the problem wasn't there. And because of that small section missing, Slic3r wanted to put an solid layer in a random spot where there seemed to be one layer missing.

Again I'm not really sure what happened, but the remaking of the vessel half seemed to fix it, so it was ready to print. 

But it really wasn't. It separated from the plate with about an hour left in its 6hr printing time. This was done with both the half and full vessel. I know that it was a heating problem, so I tried again, but that wasn't the end of it. Also, I forgot that my form wasn't symmetrical, so I snapped the corner of my acrylic plate, but Gorilla glue with Gorilla tape seemed to give it the strength it needed to be able to pull a plaster.

It would take a few more tries and unfortunately a larger amount of wasted filament than I would have liked, but it kept failing at different moments. I tried printing the parts separately to see if it was just the proximity that was throwing them off, but that was not the chase. It was a corruption of the g-code.  

I was getting very frustrated and was unhappy with another failed print day for the parametric vessel, and was about to leave for the night when an absolute angel appeared. This angel helped me fix my g-code and helped ensure that the print would be successful which it was!! 

With the print done, I could do the plaster mold. 

When doing the plaster, I almost filled it over the lip of my vessel which might have been a problem. I did notice before I did the plaster that my print had some minor layer separation at the top that would have been a problem, but a little bit of clear Gorilla glue smoothed down with watered paper towel worked well to seal them. I did have some trouble making the full vessel fit in the half mold, but that may be because there was a slight difference in both prints. 

The next layer didn't have a problem.

The mold worked and just needed to be cleaned, and it is out drying. Hopefully I can cast with it soon.