General 3D Printing Thread


 
Had the Da Vinci for a bit over a week. 1st print was a HM 4.0 Case, stock software & the cartridge that came with it. It was OK, print quality was a bit off.
Tried the hacked XYZ software, couldnt get it to work.

Flashed Repetier (luc-repetier beta 2 .bin release)
scratched glass because XYZ/Repetier treat the Z home differently...grrrrr
Not a bad scratch, but annoying
Got Repetier working & made a cube that was 1 path thickness - layers look great.

Making the 'Huge Lego Batman' from thingiverse now for my nephew - with cheap filament (hatchbox ~$22/kg from amazon vs ~45/kg for XYZ)
Repetier is a HUGE improvement over XYZware.
Now i need a better spool holder than the one that doesn't spin...

$500 & expensive, proprietary filament + crappy software - no way
$400 & open firmware + voided warranty = I'd buy it again.
 
I've heard really good things about the M2 actually. I'm not sure if they've started shipping their V4 extruder with the units but people say it is an big improvement on their design. I can't remember why but you might want to look into that.

I decided last week to upgrade my cardboard box covered in duct tape enclosure with a proper one made from some leftover deck railing, whiteboard, and reflectrix.


I decided to ditch the old ATX power supply and put in one of those 12V 30A guys and some of those cheap LED strip lights ($9 for 5M what!). I kinda want to flip the power supply around so the fan actually works and doesn't suck in 50C air to cool the power supply but it works for now.
 
Thanks for the feedback on it. My wife actually told me to buy one, lol. At first i told her around 600 or so and then she saw the reviews of m2 and told me to get it. Will wait a bit though to get one, and it has a 3 to 4 week shipping window.
 
That M2 is an amazing looking printer. I just finished a Makerfarm 10 inch I3V and have been getting great results right from the start but I only got the printer for fun. Wish I had a good reason to justify an M2!
 
Dan Francis said:
That M2 is an amazing looking printer. I just finished a Makerfarm 10 inch I3V and have been getting great results right from the start but I only got the printer for fun. Wish I had a good reason to justify an M2!
Click to expand...

Having a wife making all the justifications for me, is all i need as justification, i need lol.

I wasn't going to get one in that price range either. But, hey can't argue with a wife, atleast this time, lol.
 
Anybody use Simplify3d? Worth the $150? While my $400 printer has it's limitations, most of the screwups I deal with are slicer & support related (bridges ending in thin air, small pillars that get knocked over, etc). Being able to edit each layer before Gcode creation sounds like a fix for most of my problems.
 
Hello all,

I have a friend who is trying to print me the case but is having issues every time. He says that the edges are jagged and it tends to lift up just past the half mark. He's tried everything from hairspray to masking tape to his heated bed to using another 3d printer (same design), but gets the same issues.

Oddly enough, when I took the stl file, modified it in Creo (to remove some features) and saved it back as an STL file it printed fine, except for the fact that for some reason the dimensions came out a bit too small. That may have been just random error with too thick of plastic, but he was able to print one half way descent.

Anyways, I tried to look through the thread to get some ideas, but I think my lack of 3d printing knowledge is hurting me. Is the common slicer software used Slic3r?

Any other tips you guys have?

Thanks

MK
 
I had a lot of problems with the print warping too at first. I eventually built a little enclosure around my printer to help stop it. The solution was to get the temperatures just right though. I print my ABS cases at 220C extruder, 97C bed and haven't had a problem in a while. Without the enclosure it had to be 105C. Interestingly enough I was printing some parts to make a new printer, which had thicker walls and more infill, and those would warp every time at 97C about 2-3 hours in. When I bumped the bed up to 105C (still in the enclosure) it printed perfectly every time.

Without the enclosure, it can take a good 20+ minutes for my printer to get to 105C, so that's close to the limit of what my heated bed can run. I'd suggest running the heated bed a little hotter if you can or maybe putting a box over the printer while it prints, creating the Schrodinger's Cat paradox of 3D print warping.
 
what 3D programs have you found to work best for you? including being able to add threads?
I have 2 Makerfarm printers up and going. Now I am trying to do some designing.
 
I've been using Fusion 360 from autodesk - free & works pretty well. I haven't created threads, but it can do it pretty easily.
I don't like sketchup, but it's popular.
Openscad is popular, but it's greek to me
 
I use OpenSCAD for everything. I keep trying to use other packages but I keep going back to it. It seems so difficult to modify something once you build it in a CAD program. "Well this piece is 1mm too long so I will just move this and move this and move this and move this and move this and move this aaaand I think that's it?" whereas in OpenSCAD you just type the new value and bam everything moves. I was using 123D recently and could not figure out how you can make two coaxial cylinder holes unless they happen to fall on the same snap-to point. And then if they needed to be moved forget about it. I spent so much time struggling trying to align objects by eye, I can't imagine how a precision part is ever made in them. I have Fusion 360 on my "to try" list next!
 
Fusion 360 is an evolution of 123D. And you're describing my frustration with any modern CAD package I've tried - it's hard to go back & make changes (especially the farther back in the workflow you try to go). It was easier to do 3D in autocad r14 than it is in some of the solid modeling packages because you had to draw each edge. At least you had control of each edge (good luck blending faces....)
Try importing a .stl & getting any type of dimensional accuracy for modifying a section.....

I guess if it was easy, everybody would do it.
 
This is a great thread, just wanted to say thanks.
Friend just got a Prusa i3 and will be a joint effort using it for stuff, can't wait.

Bryan, went looking at your pics, looks like you have something new in the works :)
 
That looks like an interesting design you've got coming together with the v-rails Bryan... I like the single motor design on the z-axis, had thought of mod'ing my i3 to have something similar.

I've still got my stack of v-rail sitting here, been tossing around so many design ideas but can't seem to land on one. I kinda like the idea of moving the hotend in both X/Y directions rather than moving the heavy bed, but was still thinking about moving the hotend up the z-axis rather than moving the bed up/down. I see you have two motors on the y-axis, there's a lot of rapid motion on that axis, wonder if those two motors will want to come out of sync and jam up the carriage? I will be interested to hear how it works out. Looks really cool!
 
Bryan, does having an enclosed case help a lot with warping? Seems like no mater what I set my heated plate to I still get warping. I have tried the hairspray and abs juice. I tried printing a 12 in tent stake and it will work, but it was really warped.
thanks for any hints or suggestions.
 
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RalphTrimble said:
That looks like an interesting design you've got coming together with the v-rails Bryan... I like the single motor design on the z-axis, had thought of mod'ing my i3 to have something similar.

I've still got my stack of v-rail sitting here, been tossing around so many design ideas but can't seem to land on one. I kinda like the idea of moving the hotend in both X/Y directions rather than moving the heavy bed, but was still thinking about moving the hotend up the z-axis rather than moving the bed up/down. I see you have two motors on the y-axis, there's a lot of rapid motion on that axis, wonder if those two motors will want to come out of sync and jam up the carriage? I will be interested to hear how it works out. Looks really cool!
Click to expand...
Yeah! Sorry I missed that you guys had posted to this thread. I had two motors on the Z-axis but the bed is just so dang heavy that when the steppers weren't powered, if a feather landed on the bed one of the motors would slip a little and it would get out of alignment. I didn't want to constantly be leveling the bed every time I brushed against the printer so I decided to link them both together. Going from this


To this, which has a 20T gear on the stepper and 40T on the 8mm lead screws. This means the same torque is used as when there was 2 motors, and in addition doubles the Z axis resolution. It was 25 full steps per mm, which is 0.04mm per step and made for some funky layer heights (i.e. 0.08, 0.12, 0.16, 0.2, 0.24, 0.28, 0.32, etc). Now it is 50 fulls steps, or 0.02mm. The tradeoff is speed at which the bed can move, but I can still move at 5mm/s no problem which is faster than the old i3. I will test the limits of the speed someday when it is done. I used a 848mm GT2 belt to link them, because I expected to run it to the back, but it is pretty busy back there so I decided to put the Z stepper up front. I've got a 976mm coming with the intention of moving the lead screws back a bit to get them closer to the center of gravity of the bed.


The two X/Y motors are actually set up in a CoreXY arrangement, so one motor can only move the carriage diagonally by itself. I'm not sure how it could get out of sync, but that hasn't happened yet. I've had the carriage zipping around at 200mm/s 3000mm/s2 acceleration. I haven't maxed it out on speed yet and I am only running the 1.5A steppers at 0.5A each because I've run the carriage into things quite a bit, and the wires are too short right now, so I'd hate to damage things while messing around. The bed is a 12"x12"x1/4" cast MIC-6 aluminum plate with a 750W silicone heater strapped to the bottom. It heats up to 100C in like 2 minutes.

It has a bowden extruder which is where I am stuck right now. The extruder drive gear I got from china wasn't so much toothed as it was deeply scratched. When I try to print anything the filament skips a lot and generally makes a mess.
 
Richard Apgood said:
Bryan, does having an enclosed case help a lot with warping? Seems like no mater what I set my heated plate to I still get warping. I have tried the hairspray and abs juice. I tried printing a 12 in tent stake and it will work, but it was really warped.
thanks for any hints or suggestions.
Click to expand...
I'd say the enclosure helps a bit. I had a really hard time printing HeaterMeter cases without the edges curling until I built the enclosure. I actually just took a cardboard box and put it upside down over it for like 6 months and that worked just as well. I had tried putting a thick brim on it, building a wall 1mm around it, nothing else seemed to work. I should note that now I keep the top open a bit because it gets really hot (60C+) inside the enclosure otherwise. All the electronics are in there so I was worried about it overheating.

However, when I started printing parts for the new printer they warped like a mofo. I was printing them with 4 walls and 40% infill and they'd warp about 2-3 hours into a 4 hour print. Upping the bed temperature from 95C to 105C ended up fixing it.
 
Nice looking corexy Bryan. When I built mine I went through Bowden hell until I found the Bondtech extruder. Look it up, by far the most innovative extruder I've ever seen and works like a charm. It is nearly impossible to make it slip.
 
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