Tonight I completed the first part of a 3d printing experiment to make chocolates. I’ve been meaning to experiment with a Paste Extruder but I decided that this time I’d try printing with standard PLA filament and then making silicone moulds. First I printed a few Escher Lizards (scaled by 0.3) like this: Then I used some Hiflex Food and Skin Safe Silicone Putty Rubber Moulding Paste to make a mould.

Glow-in-the-dark filament is brilliant. I got mine from [reprapworld.com][]. Getting the extrusion temperature right so that the filament didn’t ooze out of the nozzle all over the place took a little time but it is ideal filament for printing Halloween goodies. I started with some simple objects from thingiverse. First I printed a couple of glow-in-the-dark spider webs: Then a brilliant glow-in-the-dark vampire skull: Then I spotted Reuben’s ghost hand print card and decided to try to make a 3d print version.

[I wrote this blog entry a while ago but I’d not gotten around to finishing it.] I’m sad to say I gave up trying to get my Sumpod 3d printer to work reliably. Despite spending a lot of time and effort, the fact is that the combination of problems with the extruder and the hot end made it not worth my time to get it working. (Some of the newer Sumpod models have improved the extruder and also allow mounting of the extruder at the hot end eliminating another potential source of problems - the Bowden tube - and some owners of the original Sumpod are making progress towards reliable prints so perhaps my Sumpod adventure is not quite over.