Sanding, smoothing, post-processing

I am happy to report a very good method for smoothing PLA parts. Reviewing the wiki page for clothing irons, the range from wool to cotton looks promising for plasticizing PLA in this case. The parts were printed with the lowest resolution possible, hence the quality seen.

So my method yesterday was to apply a sheet of wax paper to my part (it happens to be the carbon fiber—infused variety up around 205°C) and to apply heat with a standard iron for cloth. I have to say that this works like a charm.

Granted, this represents only a few minutes of effort since I was in a hurry. But you can see that the little amount of effort can really knock down the grooves. The sides looked the best (since they're a flat surface) unfortunately I didn't take a good picture of that.

Before:



After plus side-by-side comparisons:

 

To further the concept, I take thin strands of filament, say, from having removed a raft or support and then melting it into those gaps from the earlier episode where I restarted the print job.

One of these parts only got minor post-processing with the spatula and the other got the ironing treatment plus gap-filling. Remember that it had a fairly obvious-looking gap all the way around before this.