Our first printer and print!

Castle 3

Castle 3

Our first real 3D printer arrived in Beijing! It’s an Up! Plus 2 model and, in addition to the white filament, we also purchased red and blue rolls. Cece described her experience with the purchase and set up in a separate blog, while Patrick helped on the technical side. Using the red filament, the first model we tried, not to anyone’s surprise, was my castle, although I gave it more details than the original version.From my side, I was very pleased with the result. We had gone out to dinner during the printing process and the printing bed had cooled. This cooling caused the model to stick to the bed a bit. But Patrick was able to pry it out with the work gloves they provided. After that, the support material came off straight away, revealing a clean, shiny, new toy about the size of a ping-pong ball. I wondered how the merlon (the small raised part of the upper walls) would come out and they were pretty solid.And so, taking this new, red toy back to Hong Kong, I showed it to my daughter.What a smile! Any parent would treasure such a moment with their own children.Elizabeth grabbed the model, examined it and ran her fingers over the top and through the windows. She remembered my model on my computer and said, “You made this on your computer?” “Yep but I also used a new printer which is in Beijing.” “It’s beautiful. Can you also make in other colors like pink and blue?” “I can but I just need to get the material.” “It’s great. I like it a lot! Thank you! Can you buy a printer and make more? I want more!” After that, she just held on to it for the rest of the night. (She even dropped it, but it didn’t chip nor crack, so it’s a solid piece of plastic.) I managed it get it back after she went to bed, but the first thing she said the next morning, “Morning dad, where’s my castle?”