Moon surface with Tintin's Rocket

prusaprinters

Updated with .3mf files (smaller)Wanted the famous Tintin rocket, so my choice stopped with the Maxdarkdog model, which is easy to print without support, and in my opinion, one of the nicest when assembled. I scaled it to 75% (27 cm.) which is big enough for me. Important, do not forget to identify your parts once printed (sharpie dots or numbers, since you won't see it when finish), because it is easy to mix them, and once assembled, they are really hard to take appart without breaking them. Ask me ! Then I decided to find a soil to put it, so found maps from “NASA Moon Trek” with the "Hesiodus Crater". There is a tutorial when you get to the site and a lot of information about how to download and print maps of the moon. I scaled it down to be able to put on the print bed with a crater big enough so the rocket could fit in it. Dimensions of the scaled map are 230 X 230 mm.Was printed vertically. I tried vase mode, but with a 0.4 mm nozzle, at 0.2 mm height., due to the topographic inclines, the walls were not solid and filament was missing to the more curved parts, so I chose to print it with 3 layer walls (0 infill), but was almost not enough, and had to do some repairs with a welding tip and some filament. Since without infill, there was a big opening at the top, I printed the missing top, and glued it to cover the opening, and took the opportunity to print the name on it. I would recommend at least 4 layers, to save some postprinting work ! Was printed with gray PETG to stay in the tints of moon surface, but was only looking like gray plastic. For the finish, I sprayed glued the entire surface and immediately poor some fine sand over it. Turned it upside down to remove the excess, but when dry, there was always grains of sand coming out of it, so I sprayed "satin varnish" all over, just enough to wet the sand, and took some paper towels to sponge the excess to some area. Once dried, there was no more grain sand coming out of it. Maybe It's not the real color of the moon, but it does not look like a plastic map anymore…