This past weekend I had the opportunity to get my hands on some ABS glue, so I glued the Knife blade together. It went pretty flawlessly. Although I don't have anything to show for that process, I can say that I need to use clamps to insure that the seems were a 100% perfect match or as close as I could get to it.
With the way dimensions printer prints is called FDM printing (fused deposition modeling). It works on the principle that the printer head extrudes ABS filament, in layers and builds up from a platform. But in order for it to work it has to stop and start extruding. This had left some undesirable areas on the knife (areas that were not complete kinda just like two strands of filament not connected to anything and this was also limited by the resolution capabilities of the printer itself). So I turned to my trusty friend Bondo and faked it. I sanded the abs down where it wasn't correct and rebuilt the edges with a light coat of bondo. Fortunately, the majority of the 'damaged' areas were in the handle part so there wasn't to much
On the surface of the knife there was small crosshatching patterns that are also a result of how the printer finished a surface. Back and forth at 45 degrees lines of filament - one in one direction, another in the opposite. Texturally, this wasn't gonna do so once I finished bondoing I put spot puttied on the entire piece - both sides.
All the spot putty sanding was done with 320 grit again, because its what I had laying around. And I rather like how much or little it can take off based on pressure and vigor. This wasn't particularly difficult, but it required a fine attention to detail to ensure that the holes and destiny logo details didn't get filled in.
After the spot puttied was sanded and to a consistency I was happy with, It was time for primer.
I just used what I had laying around the house (I think in this case it was Krylon primer). However given the option for the first few coats of primer I generally use RustOleum filler primer - it does a great job at covering and is very quick to dry, especially in the AZ heat. Forgive me for the next two images, they aren't of great quality - I was in a work flow where I just snapped some photos and kept going never checking them until now.
After the first coat of primer, I applied spot putties to areas which were still not up to par. It was sanded to 320 once more, than resprayed with primer - a slightly thicker coat this time.
After the primer had dried, the piece was pretty good, I used some 600grit wet or dry sandpaper and wet sanded the blade. Wet sanding is exactly what it sounds like, wetting the sandpaper to help with finer sanding work. (generally with fine sandpaper, when you sand what you're sanding gets built up in the paper, the water helps to keep the paper from getting gummed up). In addition the 600 grit will help to make the finish on the blade almost like glass.
The blade is now ready for molding, and with any luck I'll be picking up some Silicone from my local Reynolds Advanced Materials - Friday - and we can begin the process of molding and eventually casting this knife.
Thank you guys for reading and as always feel free to ask question and comment, I'm always open to suggestions and love hearing feedback.
Cheers,
Kevin
No comments:
Post a Comment