Has anybody tried to polish raw (unpainted) WSF? I was hoping to be able to do this with a Dremel on a low speed setting in order to smooth out the surface of the material as opposed to using sand/wet sanding paper. As a matter of interest has anybody had success smoothing unpainted WSF material using papers of a Dremel? Thanks
I've sanded it with ordinary sandpaper. You can get it a lot smoother, the problem I've noticed is that it is hard to keep the surface uniform. After I dye the sanded pieces, you can still see marks from the sanding. Painting may work better, as far as getting a more uniform look.
Hey, I realized I have a rock tumbler. Anybody tried polishing WSF by fulling a rock tumbler with some kind of beads and soapy water? Sort of a do it yourself polished white strong and flexible?
I'm assuming you guys haven't yet seen the news about the introduction of Polished WSF? Or maybe you just really like to do these things yourself?
Yes, it's great news! There is just one thing I wanted to point out - looking at some of the exemplar pictures, the material appears to still be textured, although members testimonials are stating that it is silky smooth. I am going to try it out anyway. David.
WSFP does feel silky smooth, but there is some texturing... the full size image of my Baritone Horn in the examples is about eight to ten times real life size (the smallest pipes are only 1mm diameter)
Is it likely to be less textured on less intricate larger basic shapes or will the texture remain on whatever is produced using this method? It certainly looks more appealing than the original WSF and more saleable. I really didn't like the feel of the original WSF, it just didn't feel like a commerical material. Thanks for the pic!
How does it affect build layers? The steps in spherical shapes, for example, are they less obvious? Same?
The steps in spherical shapes are more to do with the resolution of the triangle size of the model rather than the finish. For comparison, unpolished and polished versions.
The question is if the polishing manages to hide them, not at all, or partially. The musical instrument has no obvious zones... but a cube with rounded corners seems to (fuzzy photo).
My horn had no stepping to start with, so none to polish off. I don't know how that rounded corner cube was 3d modelled, but it looks like the flat face has succumbed to some 'down-skin' droop. The rounded corners look fine, but there is a definate ridge around the square flat face. Looking at the model page, I'm guesstimating the ridge is in the order of 0.1-0.2mm (the square face being about 16mm accross from what i figure). I suppose, a model is needed with varying triangle resolution in a number of curves and flat planes to give a true all round picture.
Are we talking about the same concept? A "tube" with 32 side quads and 3 mm diameter had steppings just where the faces were near parallel to the build layers (it was built on its side, not with the axis up). And the sides, where one face covers 0.3mm of height all by itself, is rounder. Maybe worth sending yet another testing shape in next order.
I'm sure we're talking about the same concept. The way I look at designing for WSF is to make the triangle size smaller than the minimum detail for smooth rounded areas... flat areas seem to have a mind of their own and often have a ridge or indent depending which side is up or down in the print plane. My theory is that if the triangle resolution is bigger than the print resolution, the printer approimates from one vertex to the next causing stepping. So far, with WSF, I get nice round smooth corners using triangles smaller than 0.1mm.
I just tested using diluted artists acrylic, brushed on, the paint goes on evenly and rinses off under running water without leaving paint residue in the surface. From that, I'd concluded that the surface is sealed and not at all porous.
Regarding triangulation and/or (stair)-stepping: I have found no correlation between the two. Large models with lots of curves and many many small triangles (smaller than print resolution) can still show stepping on the near level (bottom) surfaces. And models with bigger triangles, just tend to show the triangles, I have noticed no increased stepping from this, just visible polygonization, which can be quite smooth. As far as I can tell the stepping is mostly depended on the print resolution and what the bottom side in the printer is.