Fred Fields is a colleague and friend. He’s an amazingly talented artist. A while ago, Pete Anderson, another talented colleague and friend decided he wanted to model Fred’s head. (I didn’t ask.)

When I saw the model, I thought that this would be an ideal thing to print. So with Pete and Fred’s permission, I got the file and printed Fred’s head, a 4.5″ tall print, in .15mm mode, which means it prints 10 layers for 1.5mm in height. This print took 6.5 hours.

It is not without its problems.

In fact, when the print got to the shoulders near the neck, some scaffolding it had printed to support the ears fell over and I had to pause the print. I glued the scaffold back in, revealing to me an amazing thing: This printer can repair scaffolding. By printing the current layer where it is supposed to go, if there is anything supporting this level, even if it’s out of place, it will support the printing of it in place, and if for some reason it isn’t perfect, it’s there to support the next layer better, and over a few layers, it can actually be back printing fully perfect scaffolding. I have to say – that surprised me.

But the pause may have caused some heat differences, because around that point, at the back (thankfully) there is a stress crack that you don’t see in these photos.

I will be printing this again, one without a crack, hopefully, for Pete, another one for Fred (so I can retrieve the cracked one) and one for me.