Beholder Sliced

thingiverse

First major kudos to the model creator for this outstanding model - it's top-notch modeling work. I just wanted to get a better print without any issues with supports or the other version of this model that has supports, as seen in photos from others, didn't look like they went together cleanly due to excessive gap filling. The other scaled-up version of this model, which I attempted twice at 130%, consistently printed poorly and died on me around 20% of the way up, causing the print head to move all the way to the right and continue running without crashing. Without scaling it, the print went fully through but lacked quality. I took the original high-resolution awesome model into Studio Max and sliced it in a way that both halves can be laid flat on the bed for printing. The top half does require supports and I recommend using a raft unless your supports are rock solid when sticking to your bed. The bottom half, however, doesn't need any supports or a raft. I've printed it in PLA with Simplify3D on a MendleMax 3, achieving very good results. The only issue I had was the lower tentacle on the left side being rough where it didn't get supported well; a tiny bit of sanding and some filler will fix it for painting. A picture of the front half is shown here before any clean-up, other than removing support structures. You can see the fuzz on the left tentacle sticking out to the side, while the back slice looks even better. I printed it at 120mm with a .15 layer height, 15% infill, in Hatchbox white PLA using a nozzle temp of 202 and a bed temp of 40C, along with purple glue stick on glass.