General 3D Printing Thread


 
Ralph, the other possibility is a series of lost y steps. This happened to me a while ago causing a similar looking print. I just had to up my motor current and the problem was solved.
 
OK, no preemptive victory lap this time, I am holding the item in my hands... my first successful print of the back of the Heater Meter case.

Here it is....

back1.jpg


back2.jpg


Looks pretty good, now on to the front, wish me luck!
 
Well, it was my goal to print the top of a case tonight as well, the printer is ready and waiting, but for some reason after I slice the top it always ends up upside down on the platter.... It wants to print the sides first and then the face up in the air which would be a giant bridge and I assume wont work. For the life of me I cant figure out how to make Pronterface, Slic3r or 123D Beta put the face surface down first???
 
Looking good. The first thing I always do is run the stls through netfabb studio to repair any errors. I also make any orientation changes that have to be made using this program.
 
OK, Netfabb, another lesson learned... There were errors reported that it said I might want to fix... The orientation thing really had me pulling my hair out. So I'm off to check out netfab.
I also thought that wasnt a bad print for only having the printer up and running for less than 24 hours! For a while there during the build and my first test prints I thought I would NEVER have complete part stuck to my glass...
 
Got Netfabb installed but am having a problem, when it loads the area where I should see the object is transparent (can see windows desktop through it). Seems like it doesnt like my video driver or something? I checked the video settings and there was nothing there that helped. Damn it, a snag around every corner. Maybe netfab doesnt like XP? Any suggestion to help get it rolling is appreciated. In the meantime I guess I will have to check out their cloud service...
 
I just uploaded my stl file of the top of the case to the Netfabb cloud... Hopefully that will work for me but I am worried it wont automatically fix the orientation so the face is down?
 
Good news, I installed the latest video driver (+Catalyst Control Center) and Netfabb is working now! I wasn't holding out much hope cause this computer hardware and OS are so old, the video card has been moved the the legacy bin so I thought I would be screwed and was already moving toward loading Netfabb on my Linux machine. Glad I dont have to do that cause I am running the printer from this XP machine here and it would be a pain to have to repair stl files on the Linux machine every time.

At any rate, I am off to explore Netfabb and hopefully repair and rotate the object.

Do you guys slice with Netfabb or just repair?
 
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Alright, got the case top file loaded into Netfabb, repaired, rotated around the y-axis, saved as stl file (had to add the extension to the file name). Opened up in Pronterface, sliced with no errors and FINALLY there it is sitting face down on my G-code view... WHEW... That was like pulling teeth, but once again I learned a LOT. Thanks for the guidance... Hope to have a complete HeaterMeter case SOON! Wish me luck....
 
Printing the top half went even better than the back, I'm pretty happy with my progress with the 3D printer at this point, I would say I had a slow start but came from behind...

FINALLY I can try and fit my Heater Meter boards into a case!

Top1.jpg


Top2.jpg
 
Good news, bad news.

Good news is the HM + rPi boards fit in the top I just printed incredibly well, they just snapped right perfectly!

The bad news is the bottom I printed does not match the top! I printed the bottom last night (v2.6 large display) and the top today (V2.7 Large Display). I guess I could cut and drill this back I have but I think I will just run a print of the back to match this front.

So, the question is, should I print the back that is in the V2.7 file or is there a newer back that will still mate with this V2.7 front. I at least want to make a case that fits together out of this...
 
The 2 pieces should still fit together. There was no change to the bottom pieces between 2.6 and 2.7. Dimensionally they are exactly the same. The only changes were to the tops, and they were minor changes with the nut traps.
 
IDK what to say then, the bottom I have here is missing the holes in the sides for everything except the fan... but seems to be full height? Anyways. Printing the V2.7 back now...
 
I didnt know about netfabb last night...
I know now, and did run the V2.7 back through netfabb before I started that print. Just laying down the first layer now....
 
And here we have it, my very own 3D printed case! What a journey!
Thanks a bunch to you guys who've worked so hard on all of this...
HMCase.jpg
 
Nice job! How did the hairspray work out? Let me know how you did your hairspray application and what settings you used.
 
The nut traps inside required that you give a bit of space between the standoffs for the lcd and the corners of the case so that you could actually get the nuts in. I am currently working on the 4 line display versions for the newest case (see case thread) which will not have this problem because the nut traps are no longer inside.
 

 

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