Benchmark Bay

Around The Benchmarks in 350 minutes

Your adventure begins on the placid waters of a river coursing among the dense trees of the Forest of Strings, where the sun shines through only when the weather settings are just right.

If you are able to not get stuck in the thick branches and the verdant foliage, the river will lead you to one of the majestic sightings of this area: the Tolerance Mesa, standing stoic and lonely on our portside. It is said that if you manage to climb atop the structure and meditate for the appropriate amount of time, upon your return you will be able to always discern the right distance to be kept in any situation, be it emotional or physical.

If an imposing wall of stone is too oppressive for your taste, you can safely turn your gaze to starboard towards the vast Texture Plains. The open sky and clean air will do wonders for your claustrophobia and, if you stop the ride for a while, you can frolick in the grass or run through the plains like a wild stallion.

Once you're done frolicking, you can jump back on your Benchy and continue to the other natural landmark of Benchmark Bay. The waters will become a little rowdy and your ears are going to be filled with the roaring of thousands of liters of water falling from a ledge higher than the mesa you just coasted. The Overhang Falls are just at the edge of the closest cluster of mountains in the Banchmark Bay area; they are famous for the particular shape of their cliff: a wall of rock that keeps increasing its angle until it seems to defy gravity. The ledge extends so far beyond the base of the cliff that our watery guide is able to flow behind and beneath the waterfalls, gifting us with a magnificent and unique view.

While you are still processing the experience, the roaring of the waterfall will reluctantly leave room to the rythmic and sharp banging of metal on stone, for you are approaching the Cartesium Quarry. Here the precious stone is mined in the form of cubes and only the ones calibrated to perfection are green lit for refining.

Next to the quarry are the Ironing Factories, where the metal for the shipyards is produced and where they definetely DO NOT dump industrial waste in the bay like the good people they are. A fun quirk about the factories: they have really smooth roofs, go figure.

On the other side of the river, through a bridge, are the Diameter Pits, a group of circular shaped ruins of various sizes that have been repurposed by an unknown organisation as fighting pits. There the workers go after work to watch and sometimes to participate, because good people sometimes need to do that too.

Just ahead after the bridge you will be able to see the Square Lighthouse, which warns the sailors to the ridge of Benchmark Bay.

The river then runs back towards the Forest of strings separating the Texture Plains from the Infill Fields below; here many different crops are cultivated and rotated.

After a while you turn back south towards the sea circling the fields until you reach the city of Benchmark Bay with its architectural wonder: the Suspended Pagoda, a building in the traditional japanese style layed on top of a grid of thin pillars with each level built with a different construction technique.

Finally you let the river set you free into the First Layer Sea right beside the docks of Port Bridges.

The Model

Reading the theme of the contest and the message from the creator of the Benchy I knew this remix needed to capture the spirit of adventure and pioneerism they must have felt while designing and perfecting their first printers. Sadly, I was too young for the first generations of 3D printers and I've come into this world with a reliable and easy to use A1, but with all the settings and material conditions that could make a print fail I'd say I'm grateful for all the boundaries they pushed.

Given this headstart, I felt that calibration models and tests were not as necessary as before and possibly a waste of filament; therefore I wanted to build a story around them, if only to print them once.

Here are all the tests I incorporated in the model in order of appearance:

• Benchy
• Stringing Test
• Tolerance Test
• Overhang Test
• Calibration Cube
• Finish Texture Examples
• No ironing/Ironing Examples
• Diameter Test
• Scale Test
• Sharp Corners Test
• Infill Examples
• Pin Support Challenge
• Temperature Tower
• Bridging Test
• First Layer Test

For the Temperature Tower to work, since these type of modifications cannot be included in the model, you will need to add the following custom G-code at the specified layer:

• layer 250: "M104 S230"
• layer 287: "M104 S220"
• layer 325: "M104 S210"
• layer 362: "M104 S200"
• layer 400: "M104 S190"
• layer 437: "M104 S220" (Optional: just to be safe with the numbers on top)

And here is the original model of the 3DBenchy: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1272656-original-3dbenchy-public-domain-cad-step-file#profileId-1336828

It's been fun modeling this with next to no CAD knowledge, if you enjoyed it please consider liking and boosting: