Founder, Gayle Parsons, sums up the Summer Print week by week.
Week 11
As we swung into the final week on site, we were excited to be printing some larger samples, and hoped to be able to achieve a wall build-up which would be converted to a bench in due course.
We still had some small samples to print to send to Cardiff, using straw fibre in the mix and so another few hours had to be spent chopping the straw using the leaf blower (on suck) a total of 8 times for each batch – a very time consuming process which we’ll need to improve when we scale up in the Spring!
Megan did a sterling job of calibrating the boards for the larger prints, but there were a few problems with the grasshopper files which needed the help of Nestor at IAAC to sort out. This delayed the start of our wall print to the penultimate day, when we were finally able to get the base layers printed on the 18mm board – which wasn’t quite level so the first layer on one side was very squished! We managed 14 layers and the following day printed another 2 sets of layers, resulting in the most amazing print we had ever achieved!!! We were SO PROUD.
What a journey! We’ve learnt so much, in such a short space of time. We’ve had incredible highs and some terrible lows including tears from me and the words ‘this is just too hard’ frequently passed my lips! But we are so proud of ourselves for getting through it and looking forward to stepping up the pace in the Spring when we return for round 2 of the adventure!
