Highland Railway Dia 17 Jones Double Deck Sheep Wagon

Just had a very frustrating afternoon ........

First a little background

USB sticks with the Anycubic is a bit of a lottery.

My initial purchase of 16GB USB 2 sticks, wern't recognised by my Photons which at that time was all I had. After much playing around I found that partitioning the drive to get two sub 8GB partitions, and formatting the first Partition as Fat 32 worked. - Yippee.
You can store a lot of files in 8GB, infact far too many, as the Anycubic OS lists the files in date order - oldest first. So the newest files can be an awful long way down the list.
So I bought some 4GB sticks, and these worked fine.

Then I bought the Mono X's, both of these would not recognise any files on the 4GB sticks, but had no problems with the 16GB, partitioned or not.

The M3Max arrived on the scene and it didn't seem to care which stick was inserted.

Now we came to todays frustration, yesterday I ordered a 5 pack of SanDisk Cruzer Blade 32GB USB 2 sticks. I thought I'd try a named brand to see if they made a difference, and would work on both the Mono X's and the M3Max. They arrived this morning so a test was made up.

Now I had been working on the supports for the roofs and floors for the Sheep van as they were often breaking away at one corner. New files were created and loaded on to the stick for all three printers.
Inserted into the Max and no files were present
Inserted into both Mono X's and the files were present
Ok , as the prints I needed to do were on the Max, I loaded the file onto one of the existing sticks, inserted back into the Max, the old files were showing but the new files were missing. I've had this before on the Mono X where either a reboot of the printer fixed it or the stick was on its way out. Reboot didn't fix it, so back to the cave to try another stick actually 3 different sticks, another 16GB, a 4GB and an 8GB kensington. You guessed it none of them worked.
Time to reboot the PC just in case - I mean it's IT 101.
Recreated the file again in Chitubox, and prefixed the filename with CH, exported the project as a .STL and recreated the file in Photon Workshop, prefixed with a PH.
Tried again and none of the files were recognised. Now i'm starting to worry, as thats four different sticks, two different applications and I did try a different USB port on the PC.
So I formatted a stick - it was quicker than deleting all the files - then copied the new files to the stick the original and the PH & CH prefixed versions. Also copied a known good file, just to prove it isn't the write process. By now I was getting fed up of all the walking, and had a nagging feeling, so within the stickcopied the two PH and CH prefixed files and deleted the rest of the file name.
Yippee the shortened versions and the known good file were all displayed, tried the Cruzer disk and it was good as well

The file names were 50 characters long - 52 when I added the CH & PH, the known good file was 44 characters long.
Search on tinternet, recommends keeping the filename size to less than 30 characters, some of the problem solving threads suggest less than 10 characters.

The two Mono X's have forced me into adding MX4K1 or MX4K2 to the end of the filename as I have to use two different profiles K1 cure time is 3.3 sec per layer 40 sec per base layer, and K2 is 2.2 sec per layer and 20 sec per base layer. MX for mono X, and the 4K for the screen resolution, well you never know a 6K or 8K may find its way here - hope the boss doesn't read this thread.

So it looks like a rationalization of my file names needs to take place, and probably a printed list in the shed so I can translate the filename to a part name.

On the plus side the SanDisk Cruzer works on both the Mono X's and the M3Max, I haven't tried them on the Photons as they are currently in storage, theres not enough room for them in the heated enclosure. And being RGB screens take approx 4 times longer to print than the Mono printers.

Paul

 

Oh boy do I remember nested file paths, especially if someone zipped a folder structure up, then unzipped on the file server, way beyond the permitted 256. Also I think Novell supported a longer file path than Windows, which caused a lot of fun when we migrated over.

Anycubic doesn't support any file path, it has to be in the root directory.

My file structure was (Part Number + Railway company)_(Description)_(Quantity)_(Printer).(Anycubic file type suffix)
For eample on my sheep van Dia 17 the brake levers conforms to my std format but is still 38 characters long
46HR_Dia_17_Brake_lever_x62_MX4K2.pwmx

The offending filename was

CH_40HRb+c_Sheep_Wagon_Dia_17_Floors_&_roof_x5_M3max.pm3m

As I was making doing a test CH_ was for the Chitubox version for the test which made it 3 characters longer 40HR originally had the Body, Roof, Upper and lower floors.
On the Mono X's these would just fit on build plate on the M3Max I could get two sets. However I was having issues with supports failing on some of the roofs and floors, annoyingly not all.

After a few tests I was building up a stock of good bodies, so a roofs and floors print was created and no prizes for guessing on the M3Max I managed to squeeze in 5 sets of roofs and floors - I was never that good at Tetris.

Now that the test print has finished I appear to have solved the issues with the Lower floor and roof, but 3 out of 5 upper floors failed, two of them at the support level, the third may have been dislodged by the failed prints.

So I will add more Heavy supports, and possibly extend the base layer exposure and or increase the number of base layers.

Oh the fun

Paul

 

For that issue, the best method is to go as far down the path you can, select each folder and try and cut the folder and paste into an new folder at a far higher level sometimes works but not guaranteed. Sometimes we couldn't remove the file path, the only way was to format the drive, and as these were multi-drive arrays in use 24/7 so was not going to happen. At that time we only had 6 days of non-production a year, 24th, 25th, 26th, 31st Dec, 1st & 2nd Jan. So they were the only maint times available.

Ah those were the days my friends ........

Paul

 

What the flock

Finally managed to print some sheep that will fit in.

Now just have to work out how to get them in. Upper floor is easy but the lower floor ....

I'll need to paint the wagon and sheep prior to assembly.
Insert the sheep from underneath, then insert and glue the floor in position, then manuover the heep into position and glue in place.
Add the upper floor, plus sheep then the roof.

Empty vans are looking very attractive

Paul

 

I'm gonna have to I have all these sheep to find homes for, enough for at least 4 wagons.

They were a real pain, I needed to overlap them to get them packed close enough, which means legs will overlap, then add enough supports. Once printed trying to work out what was a support or leg was not easy especially with a raft in the way.

They have only had a waft of primer so far, I may try a black wash, before adding a waft of white then a wash of a light brown.
Not sure whether to give them all a black or white face - the wash may make this more apparent.

Paul

 

Now there's a Yorkshireman who knows his sheep, even the foreign one ones

You walked right into that one

Black faces it is then - I'm sure this is a wind up just to force me to paint over 100 sheep faces, hopefully I find a good looking one

Paul

 

Got me at black or white faces, on the news here they start talking about yows and tups, I thought it was a local builders merchants.

Had to look it up, and that was just too much information .....

 

Legs and faces painted black and a black wash given to all

Oops loks like some of the girls missed the make up session

The sheep dog is supposed to be a collie, may look for a better model as the ears and nose don't look right, and I'd like it to be right as it will painted to resemble Mac our recently departed collie. Bless his soul.

Paul

 

Did our resident sheep expert notice the error ?