3D Printer Nerds Talk
 

Rather than continue shitting on the 3d printed parts feeler thread I figured we should just make a 3d printer thread in the fab forum. Projects, questions, settings, whatever

Heres what I'm working with right now. It was once a folgertech 2020. But now the z axis motors are 0.9° steppers and the z screws are 1mm pitch rods. All the bearings are now misumi, all the belts are legit goodyear, using a china knockoff of the smoothie board. Bondtech qr extruder and e3d v6 hot end. Build plate is a piece of 1/4" thick MIC6 (flat within a thou cast aluminum fixture plate) and the build plate support is a random chinese aluminum one that twice as thick as stock. X axis is a v groove extrusion. And I keep all my filament in a dog food box with desiccant and it feeds through ptfe tubes to the extruder. So its basically a bunch of crap cobbled together that works better than most people's home printers but leaves a lot to be desired to someone who designs real steel fixtures and gauges that go on real machines for a living.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1a2e26201c.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1aec577da3.jpg

And this is what I've been working on. 40 x 40 extrusion, linear rail, nema23 motors, properly constrained lead screw, large build volume, no plastic parts under load. I havent worked on it in months because I've been busy working on summer projects on the house but I'm kicking at it tonight. It looks like its mechanically done besides the Y axis belt routing. And then I need mounts for the power supply, limit switches, duet board, and cable management.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9c6d02fa4c.jpg

I hit the easy button. PRUSA MK2 with a few nice upgrades still in a box. PRUSA customer service is amazing and This thing is just dead nuts reliable. I think I've run about 60 kilos through it so far and have only had to replace 1 extruder tip. It just makes me money while I sleep. I developed and prototyped a tool for a local gun shop recently, and he is going to get rich off of it. Mark my words.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1890dc8375.jpg

Is that enclosure a walmart end table?

yep. Lexan side all click in with those little NEO magnets. Printing with PET right now, it doesnt care much about wind or temp. it just works.
A better pic of it all.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e2304d1617.jpg

I had an Invent-a-part Rigidbot Regular from the Kickstarter campaign. A rigid frame design, typical belt driven axis's (apart from leadscrew Z), awful extrduer, heated bed powered through a ribbon cable.
Over the 4 fours (gone as of 2015) i had it I upgraded from belts to leadscrews, swapped out the extruder and hotend for bondtech extruder and E3D chimera which left me with a printer that produced prints better than I've received from companies.
The eagle eyed among you will have thought why did he mention the ribbon cable for the bed. The electrically minded will note a ribbon cable is thin wires and a heated bed has "large" current demand. Many owners suffered melty cable issues because of this stupid design, i didn't. I lost my house. Insured sorted everything. Literally cannot be happier with them but now i had to find a replacement. Whilst I would have bought a Rigidbot again the company went bankrupt after only a year of failing to produce the printer for all the backers and it was asset stripped by the current company still selling the same badly designed heated bed.

I now have (2.5 years and counting) a Lulzbot Taz 6 in standard configuration (but I have the leadscrews, bondtech and E3D ready). Its a very impressive of the shelf kit but it should be for the price. It is why i suggested filament on the 3D printed intake thread (but apparently that was so disliked i had 3 cats stolen :loser: )

I also have a WoW SparkMaker DLP printer (if DLP is also allowed over FDM). It is again a Kickstarter. It was incredibly cheap and aside from tuning settings it is about the most impressive quality you can find even though the print area is not big.

I also have a CNC mill (an ebay 3040 with a 1.5kW VFD spindle), an engineering lathe and a DIY reflow oven.

As you may have guessed I produce mostly home fixing type things when they break :idea:
Although I did print a can cooling spinner for giggles yesterday.

I've also had a RepRap (when they were the only one around because it was made by a university I could visit inside a half hour so could meet the people) and a RapMan.

Leafy, if you are custom designing a printer why are you keeping the largest design flaw of your current printer; the 'T' style frame? Build a cube, more better.

I have a flying bear P902 and its solid. I can roll it down the stairs and just plug it in and print without re-tramming. But the real benefit is I can print 150mm/s with almost no loss in quality. I just pick up a slight edge ring that could probably be fixed with real good year belts, not these stretchy china POSs. Besides moving the table in any axis but Z is cancer for a number of reasons.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...3921cd939c.jpg


Also having a 2020 perimeter makes it laughably easy to enclose. You just slot your choice of board(currently cardboard curtesy of ikea) into the 2020 slots.

Not to trash up the thread, but here is a link to the video of the tool me and my partner designed. we printed 25 prototypes and they were gone before he set up his booth. I did not make the video, just the plastic parts.

It's going to be squared in with 2020 to enclose it and for more stiffness. I don't like the z bed designs because they normally require it to be naturally flexible to not bind. The way e3d designed theirs with the big single linear rail and screw and cantilevered bed seems good but I wasn't confident I could make the cantilever square enough with my manufacturing capability. And I'm not ready to design a core xy.

Using a Lulzbot Taz 5 in a custom box.

It was purchased by work for work and has a lot of hours on it. I recently (months) got it running on Octo Print on a Pi so I can control it without getting up. It's been incredibly reliable. My biggest gripe with it is the z axis sag in the middle of the horizontal rods. I compensated for this by clamping the build plate in the center to mimic the curve. It's a teeny bit less accurate, but much more consistent when building the same thing in different areas of the build plate.

It's mostly unmodded except for putting a Noctua fan in the power supply to replace the harrier jet engine that came in it.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...bdcd4a07fd.png

It is pretty awesome to have the build volume this thing does. I've just about maxed it out already.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1c9f639cb4.png


This thing has more than paid for itself in equivalent cost of prototypes and waiting time.

Ummm... No. It requires you assemble it properly with mechanical skills and knowledge, and not by an engineering desk jockey.

You could also just make it a dual Z if it bothered you that much.

You gotta read dual z makes the issue of binding worse. My current printer is only dual z because the x axis isn't rigid enough. the new printer is, rigid and if I put dual z lead screws on it it would bind unless the unit was dead on balls prefect, which nothing that exists in the real world is.

:facepalm:

Ive been seriously considering buying the Folger Tech FT-5 R2
https://folgertech.com/collections/3...3d-printer-kit

I played around with a makerbot clone a couple years ago and Ive really been wanting to mess with one again. If I could make a little bit of money with it, that would be cool too.

I have been looking at that one for over a year now, its what I suggested asmasm get when he bought his. He did more research and found this, which seems better in many ways and is cheaper:

https://us.gearbest.com/3d-printers-...pp_701645.html

Im still torn between the 2 but one of them will be my next printer if I dont DIY.

more info on his blog
http://www.wrenchgame.com/2018/07/12...now-available/

The folgertech looks slightly better They both come with knock off ramps boards, that and the China belts are going to be the two most likely things to limit print speed. Neither of them really have a good bed mounting solution but most printers don't so you get to have fun with binder clips. That's one of the reasons I went with a thick aluminum build plate, so I could have no protrusions into the build area

That does look like a good option.

When you click US warehouse it has a pre-sale price of $290. If Im understanding correctly thats $60 savings just to have to wait a few extra weeks?! Thats very tempting.

I just posted the first google link that came up. They are charging almost $80 shipping, and Ive seen a few others charging nothing or like $10. You may want to shop around.

@asmasm ?

If you get the tronxy the new version (x5sa) is supposed to fix most of the major issues with the x5s. There was a while where walmart was the best deal on them in the USA but it doesn't look like they have the newer version.

All this talk about buying and upgrading this and that...I just plopped down 700 for the Prusa and dont mess with anything. Bsides the optimum speed of just 100mm sec., Am I missing something?

I plopped $320, printed a few things to improve it, and added about $7 in misc shit, and print at 150. The authentic prusas are way overpriced IMO.

Kinda nerdy, but we should do a print comparison. All these machines, same test part, print time limits- compare quality.

im game

how about a benchy scaled up 200%? in ABS
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:763622

It depends on what you are printing. If you want to do higher temp plastics that need a heated chamber then the prussia is going to be poor platform to start with. If you are printing PLA and the occasional ABS part then no biggie.

My print visual quality is just ok. Where my current printer shines is that it can make a dovetail shaped piece and cover the board with it and all of them will be within +/- 2 thou of each other measured across gage pins.

They don't skimp on components though.

I have a re-branded WanHao i3 V2.1 clone and many of the components had to be replaced or modified in some way because they "cheaped-out".

The fact that wiring to the build plate on the motherboard connector burns out easily because the wires can't handle the amperage required is a classic example of how crap some Chinese products are (see https://3dprinterwiki.info/heatbed-t...-mosfet-board/.)

So far I've added an external MOSFET to handle the above problem, added a glass plate because the build plate is now warped, added a Swiss hot-end and re-wired the heating element because the OEM wiring was too fragile.

Haven't been able to use it for weeks now because I can no longer level the build plate because the tray that the build plate mounts to (via screws and springs to control the bed levelling) keeps bending at the corners - it's way too thin aluminium so I can't tighten the offending corners.

I've ordered a more-robust lower plate but also the new Prusa Mk3 - there's so many useful things to make with a 3D printer and mine was running continuously while I was at home and I'm sick of having to deal with the ongoing issues of the WanHao printer

The mk3 looks amazing. Multiple extruder, easy eject built plate, faster, etc.

Cheap CR10, few essential mods, pretty happy with it so far. Not great, but decent for what it is. For geeking out, here's what has been keeping me (amongst a fairly big team) busy designing, building and testing the best part of the past 3 years:

Home | Enlightening Next Generation of Materials

TLDR; blown powder, laser-based deposition, 11 degrees of freedom, 4000x1500x750 mm build chamber

Anyone ever use the Formlabs Form2? I need my prints to be dimensionally accurate. Is this the one to get?

I have a WOW Sparkmaker FHD which is similar in many respects.
As it relies upon a screen to produce layers and exposure for z height.
XY dimensions are perfectly accurate to a high degree.
Z takes some tuning of your settings but can work well.

I guess the question is how accurate do you need it? Z axis layers are 0.025mm and its a 7" 1920x1080 screen so ~0.050mm
Here is the marketing gumpf printer comparison. So I'd a form2 is perfectly adequeate
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c8f30484a8.jpg
Sparkmaker vs Form2

How strong are the resin prints? I can legitimately use nylon prints, heck even pla prints if designed right and heat isn't a concern. There's not a lot of info about the strength of the resin printers.

Accuracy wise, a well tuned i3 style machine can hit +/-10thou accuracy and +/- 1-2 thou repeatability pretty easy on the first shot. If you need the print more accurate than that I've found you need to specifically fudge the features of the model to compensate for how different areas of the part are extruded and cool. If you need to nail it the first time with an fdm you need a printer that does live scan and compensate like the nicer markforged printers.

SLA parts are semi-functional. Most materials are pretty brittle, but can be assembled and used lightly. Drop and they break. Leave them in the sun and they discolor or warp. They're stronger than wax, maybe on par with balsa wood?

Of course you can get tons of various materials from water clear to flexible to semi-strong, so ymmv.

I've got a Malyan m150 here( which is a clone of a wanha a 3 which again is a clone and upgraded), and a recently aquired a Anycubic photon for waaay cheap nib. It was about 206 bucks including shipping
I didnt do any strength test with the resin yet, but i can tell you that it's the best thing since sliced bread for miniatures .

There's a resin called siraya blue, which is a tough resin, but really hard to get over here in Holland. Theres a guy on youtube who made pegs,pedals and even a sprocket for his bmx, and it seems to hold up pretty good
This one over here : I just added a pic here from one of my prints to see how detailed this thing can print.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8630578157.jpg
it printed, but the support material wasn't placed correctly causing it to curl up in the corners

Hi, I just stumbled across this thread, I built my own design CoreXY printer, and I am currently fabbing my own downpipe using printed parts, as a mock-up:

https://www.modelbouwforum.nl/media/...s2.248587/full

Cheers,

Hugo

Nice! That's pretty sweet! :likecat:

Although I was already sub'd to this, my girlfriend and I just split a prusa i3 mk3, we just started assembling it this weekend and will hopefully have it up and running next weekend. :D

2 years later and I am super happy with my CR-10; that being said, I think that the Prusa is a much better package and overall a better deal if you do not feel like fiddling around.

You might need to get a second bag of gold bears. ;)

I am probably $250-$350 into modding my CR-10 S5 so far and have a bit more to go. Most of the things though are just me wanting to spend more money. I got the TH3d silent board to install, EZABL, v6 hotend, and I need to build an enclosure for my printer. Then get the octiprint setup on it and it should be good to go for a bit. Both my CR-10 and CR-10 S5 worked great out of the box, I just like to tinker a ton of them.

Looking for someone to print a speed wrench for my mill vise. What file type is best/easiest to use?

STL is the (unfortunate) standard. Just take care of your export settings, as it will affect quality of the print based on mesh/triangulation settings (the more the better, but with a file size cost).

send a STP file with it. anyone with the ability to print probably has the ability to convert. a STP file will at least be unmolested by the triangulation.

Least unmolested?

Lol, nevermind. Beer.

Anyone got the STL for the timing gear locker? Would love to print me one of those.

The version uploaded by Brendan (Beavis) is better IMO, as it is thicker.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3288276

I am currently designing a set of tools including front/rear main seal and cam seals that stop in an appropriate depth based on the FSM, will post the links here when done.