Despite not living far from the snow, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve visited there. It doesn’t snow where I live, so it’s a nice novelty, but I’ll take the summer sun over the winter cold! One thing I did enjoy was snow shoeing though. It was a fun way to get around where regular shoes won’t take you.
QIDI Tech provided me with their latest Q2 enclosed 3D Printer and filament management system (they call it the QIDI Box). One of the main features of this printer is its heated chamber that allows you to print more specialised filaments. QIDI Tech asked whether I could print something in the snow for them and I obliged. I sourced a portable lithium ion power supply to run the printer off grid in the Australian snow fields.
A snow globe seemed like the obvious thing to print for that location. So I set about designing something with an Australian snow theme in Fusion to fit the Adafruit Snow Globe. Setting up a 3D printer in the snow is an absolute pain! I refuse to do it again. But the setup was a 1,024 Wh (2,000 W peak) potable battery powering the QIDI Q2 and QIDI Box. I did some testing and I was able to easily power the printer for 2 hours in mild temperatures. But I wasn’t entirely prepared for the lithium ion battery performance to drop off a cliff in the snow. I was able to tweak some printer settings to reduce power consumption and the two hour print completed successfully in the snow.
I was also able to enjoy some of the local accommodation at the snow which was amazing. The sights and atmosphere made it all worth it.
This video took a lot of planning and preparation and not everything went to plan. But, I was genuinely surprised that I was able to get a quality print out of a 3D printer in freezing, icy and wet conditions (and without mains power). Not something I’d particularly like to try again though!