• Polymaker HT PLA

    lion mclionhead • 06/09/2025 at 01:17 • 0 comments

    The mighty polymaker HT PLA rated for 150C showed promising results.  There was no melting in any of the trouble spots, after several cones.  It's more brittle & feels more like clay than normal PLA.  It prints at 230C while normal PLA clogs above 220C.   The 1kg roll is shorter than normal PLA because it's denser. The 1kg roll is  twice the price of the cheapest PLA.

    The decision was made to try the 40mm diameter again with 2mm walls & no reinforcing structures.

    The chopsticks got reprinted in HT PLA.  Not easy to get the cone in the narrower diameter but it looks much better.  HT PLA held up to the narrower diameter.

    A caulking plug holds the engine section on instead of screws.

  • Return of epoxy

    lion mclionhead • 05/25/2025 at 18:53 • 0 comments

    Tried a clear epoxy in the channels.  It might not be hard enough, but JB weld was more expensive.  Lions are curious how much force is actually being exerted on the melting parts.

    The nozzle clogged near the bottom of the nose, leading to some ugly welds.

    Burned a few cones & added a wire to support the chopsticks. 

    Then the nose melted & the epoxy reinforced sections melted slightly less than before.

    The lion kingdom's 5 year old roll of PETG ran out during the nose, after the nozzle clog.  The new roll had a lower printing temperature & a lower melting temperature it seems.  There's no point in using PETG if it's the same melting temperature as PLA. 

    The next step is going to be heat resistant PLA.  The problem is heat resistant PLA reviews are all sponsored & they're not allowed to show the melting point of competing materials.  They're only allowed to show a PETG of unknown melting point melting faster than HT-PLA, but as shown, modern PETG's can melt more easily than PLA.

    Given the history of 3D printing being little more than a search for higher temperature PLA, if HT PLA really worked, there would already be no other type of PLA.

  • Moar stringers

    lion mclionhead • 05/20/2025 at 06:02 • 0 comments

    Was thinking it would be nice if it slowly rotated left & right when it burned.  It would only need to actuate 1 chopstick.  It would provide some more entertainment but take more room.

    Went with a full orthogrid behind the most melted parts.  Either way, the melting seems reasonably solved.  Noted it's a very gradual melting which exponentially expands after many burns.  It's always going to gradually melt, but the stringer patterns seem to have extended the lifetime just enough.  The heat break & the masking tape are other areas which are going to limit the lifetime.

    It completely dropped the 1st layer of bridging in the nose but managed to do better in the cylinder.

    The front was sitting a bit proudly.

    The nose held up better but the cylinder was unchanged from just the vertical stringers. 

    The mane problem was shrinking of the catch point area.  That had shrinkage on the edges.

    Thinking epoxy channels on the edges should fix the mane trouble spots while the nose is already fixed.  The common reason for the melting is the large number of small windows.  If they were replaced by big holes & epoxy was applied all around, it wouldn't melt.

    Lavender & full moon are the only good ones, locally.

    The chopsticks have deformed to the point of making it harder to empty the ashes.  They might become PETG with a long weld for the hinge.  Stuff which melts as slowly as that might be easier to just melt back into position.

    Surprised there isn't a single part adhesive in filament form.  The printer would extrude it & it would cure into something heat resistant.  There is no UV cured filament.  Resins have higher melting points but are expensive.

  • Melty McMeltface

    lion mclionhead • 05/15/2025 at 23:54 • 0 comments


    A full metal ship would be ideal.  Home SLS printing is a real mess, requiring powder removal, a glove box, respirator.  JLC3DP said roughly $172 + $40 shipping to do the 50mm ship & chopsticks in metal.  Realistically, the whole chopsticks would have to be metal to dissipate the heat of a metal ship.  The whole thing would of course be reduced to 40mm & made more realistic.  The weight of steel would require beefing up the tower.  It really has to be more practical to spend that kind of money.  There are other battles.

    The next rung down is a metal combustor liner.  That would still require an exhaust hole on top & a way to attach the liner to the exterior.

    The next rung is an easily fabricated, easily installed sacrificial layer inside the artistic exterior.  Both structures would be PETG.  The exhaust still has to get out.  It almost requires scrapping all the openings except the nose hole & vents below the cone.

    Noted deformation in the chopsticks.  The key need is an air layer inside the exterior.  The part of the nose supported by the fins held up better than the any other part.  The extra material seems to absorb the heat or reinforce it.

    Any plastic ship is going to be as consumable as the incense itself. 

    There are aquarium pumps which could inject air inside the ship & maybe even create film cooling with the right printed nozzle. 

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Another PETG ship loaded with stringers emerged.  This one had many modeling errors but would show any effect from the stringers.  The trend has been adding more PETG.  More mass can absorb more heat.  The final solution may be 5mm thick walls of solid PETG.  It would still be cheaper than metal.

    Attempts to drill out stock incense cones with the electric drill were a failure.  It creates too much torque.  Nibbling at it with the manual drill is the only way.

    As with the last 3 PETG prints, yet another slight reduction in the melting but still melting in the same spots.  The next step would be a full orthogrid on the inside of just the trouble spots, but the overhangs could be difficult & there's not enough room in the nose without making it solid PETG. 

    The linear stringers tend to bend in their wide axis.

    The nose stringers tend to bend in their short axis.

    It seems the stock backflow cones create more melting because they get hotter while the drilled cones burn slower & cooler.  Cones with no drilling make the most heat because they have the most fuel.

  • More melting

    lion mclionhead • 05/14/2025 at 04:45 • 0 comments

    Progressive melting continued over many burns.  A pool of hot gas forms under the enclosed section of nose, melting the highest windows.  The windowed rear panel deforms quite a bit over time, despite the film cooling.   The hot air gun can temporarily restore the melted parts.

    There could be more stringers on the inside.  It would be impossible to apply epoxy there.  The inside of the nose is thinner than the cylinder.

    There could be epoxy under all the windows.  Then the windows could be manually drilled out again.  It would be expensive.

    A hole in the top probably wouldn't vent enough.  Past experience showed it still pools.

    Then there's CA gluing around all the trouble spots.

    A little hole on top got it pooling slightly less behind the windows.  The hole & CA glue might have slowed it down, but it still melted.

    This whole PETG idea might be busted.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The winners of a backflow incense assortment were Lily & Osmanthus.  

    Unfortunately, getting those affordably required ordering a bunch of awful flavors.

    Lily is not sold separately but osmanthus is available for a price.

  • Epoxy reinforcement

    lion mclionhead • 05/12/2025 at 18:37 • 0 comments

    Made a new ship with thicker walls.  Epoxied the trouble spots.

    It seemed to shrink less.  Then the nose started sagging along the Z seam, where it under extruded.

    So that was a 3rd trouble spot, but it's never going to be completely bulletproof as long as it's made of PETG.

    Made the final movie about it.  Some window sections always shrink, but it's less garish.

    The windows actually diffuse the upward smoke, emphasizing the backflow smoke in ways other incense burners don't.  All the other incense burners have the upward smoke fully exposed.

  • Tower foundation

    lion mclionhead • 05/11/2025 at 07:00 • 0 comments

    Plain old bolts in MDF won the foundation battle.

    The shrinking bit of fuselage might benefit from an epoxy layer. Epoxy might also bond PETG welds.

    With the tower anchored, it was easiest to tip over the entire diorama to dump the ashes.  The rocket doesn't have to unhook from the chopsticks at all, except for playing with it.  A more assertive catching pin was back on the table.

    When this project began in Jan 2023, no-one knew what a landed starship would look like after being caught by the launch tower.  The original idea was just a smoke plume from powered flight.  Then it became a pool of smoke from venting before flight.  The sight of the actual landed booster hanging from the chopsticks, smoking on the bottom was a perfect match for an incense burner. To fully appreciate it though, you have to watch it burning.

  • 1st landing

    lion mclionhead • 05/10/2025 at 05:20 • 0 comments

    A few printouts made it clear that spring loaded chopsticks would be more ideal than hooking catch points.  It's just really fiddly to get the catch points to engage & disengage without making a mess of the ashes.

    It wouldn't be possible to completely open spring loaded chopsticks though.  It wouldn't be as visually appealing with big old springs on each side.

    Accepting the problems for now, the 1st burn looked really like it just landed in real life, with the engines smoking & the whole rocket hanging from the chopsticks. 

    Ash removal was a complete mess, as expected.  More tweeking of the catching  points got it at least possible to empty the ashes with a lot of care.

    Didn't take long to notice the ship sitting lower after every landing burn.  The walls were melting.

    CA glue can buy it time, but CA doesn't stick to PETG permanently.  Thicker walls & more layers for it to pack down would be the next step.  Definitely not getting narrower than 50mm.

  • Chopstick model

    lion mclionhead • 05/07/2025 at 06:44 • 0 comments

    The guy who designed the chopsticks is made of different stuff than lions.  It was pretty hard to come up with this crude model.  The amount of time they had to design the real thing, between the announcement in Dec 30, 2020 

    & the foundation in Feb 2021 was incredibly short.  

    These kinds of structures begin with a rough idea & are massaged over time.  The launch tower might have been manely left over from the original 2016 design, which was always going to stack it.  

    Technically, the tower had 4 years while the arms modified for catching were revealed in July 2021 so the incremental  change had 7 months.

    As slow as lions are in comparison to leet ME's, the memory is still fresh of when a model like this would have taken many weeks of carving & gluing wood pieces without ever achieving the fidelity it has.

    A machine that only deposits filament required some compromises from  welded steel tubes.  It was decided to have the chopsticks hook on the rocket instead of being spring loaded.  A friction enhancing O ring should keep them from flopping around.  They're still using a more assertive tab than the real catching pins.

    Ideas of fully motorizing the thing continued to be dashed  by the lack of space, the time required for an automated system to reposition the rocket, the extra jig required to stage it off the chopsticks.  The ground jig would still be loaded manually.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Cura couldn't slice the multiple overlapping rods in the chopstick model.  It needed a remesh modifier in blender.  .2mm voxels might be optimum.

    It doesn't open as wide as the real thing.

    With everything mocked up without catching pins, noted it would make an entertaining, expensive pendulum clock.  The tower segments below the claw have to be glued to keep it from bending, but also have to allow the claw to slide on.  The top section doesn't have to be glued on, but ideally the claw could slide on from both ends.  

    The foundation was a trouble spot.  It should be glued on but has to be wider than the tower.  It could be bolted on the rear by melting a hole.  Only the rear column needs to be held down.  Post tensioning wire would require an ugly top piece.  The tower can be stuck to a sheet of tin with a magnet.

  • 50x170mm ship

    lion mclionhead • 05/06/2025 at 18:35 • 0 comments

    Created the PETG version.

    The most miserable part of assembly is creating the heat break.

    It might be possible to use a big old blob of caulking as an insulator directly on PETG.  There might be other materials, but they cost money.

    This kind of welding system has a bead on 2 axes, which makes it surprisingly rigid, but it's damn hard to align without a jig.  The welding panel also engages the clamshell.

    The catching system may not attach to the chopsticks, after it's heated & deformed. 

    By using smaller holes & covering more area on both sides, lions believe the ventilation system looks less like windows & more like a ventilation system.  It was decided that holes on both sides should create a film cooling effect.  It's going to  lose the effect of a smoking heat shield, but no-one really knows if both sides won't smoke in reality.

    This one looked especially good.  There was a moment of pride in it before the melt test.  Would increase the wall thickness to 1.5mm or add vertical stringers between the holes.  Thicker walls would reduce the airflow.

    The holes seemed to diffuse the rising smoke more & cause the backflow to be emphasized.  The engine section raised on the test stand has been a lot more visually appealing than the engine section flat on the table. 

    It once again softened & warped.  Vertical stringers should reduce this, but hanging it from the chopsticks should be a game changer.  The loads won't go through the deformed section.  Kind of disappointing that 50mm isn't making any obvious difference.