3D Print Salvage

I recently made a rather large 3D printed project and was dismayed to come in after an 8 hour print to see one corner of the platform upturned.

This very quick tutorial is how I fixed this problem and salvaged the piece.

What you will need:

The 3D Printed object to be re-shaped

A surface that can take some heat (I used the drill plate to my drill press)

A heat gun

Clamp

Something to reshape the plastic while it's HOT (I used a long bolt - not shown)

This piece was supposed to be the top of my 3D printed lantern. With the corner up like this I would not be able to use it. I could of just tried re-printing it, but this was a large piece and I didn't want to waste the material.

Clamp your damaged 3D printed piece to a surface that can get hot. As mentioned above I used the plate to my drill press. I first tried just holding it in place, but heat guns get HOT and I was cooking my hand, plus it was hard to hold the piece, hold the heat gun and reshape all with just 2 hands.

Do this very slowly. It only took a couple seconds (ON LOW) to get the plastic malleable. I didn't want to melt into a puddle and so I would aim the gun at the project for a second or two and then test if it was enough.

I would say within 10 seconds the plastic was soft enough to push it down (with a bolt - not my finger - I didn't want the kind of burn melted plastic can give) and reshape it.

As it cooled I kept the bolt lightly against it so it wouldn't 'pop' back up.

I let the project cool for 5 minutes or so. After 5 minutes (by the time I put the heat gun up and got something to drink) it had cooled completely and was again hard and set.

Now my piece is usable and fits on top of my lantern. You can still see where I had re-shapped it, but I am sure that after I sand the whole project and paint it no-one will ever know it tried to be a problem piece :).