3D printer thread - what have you been printing? - Creationism Corner

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;46500947]Will intersecting objects create issues? I'm having trouble with the last part of my wheel centers[/QUOTE] It might make the inside of the model a little weird, but it's nothing worth mentioning unless you've got inverted normals. And yeah, like opti2000 said, prints can be hella-strong. I've used ABS prints to fix my fridge, my table, my dad's boat and the printer itself.

Okay then. Got the caps done just need to take off my rims to investigate the attachment tabs on the base. Is doing this a good idea? [IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23414526/Caps.PNG[/IMG]

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;46503578]Okay then. Got the caps done just need to take off my rims to investigate the attachment tabs on the base. Is doing this a good idea? [IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23414526/Caps.PNG[/IMG][/QUOTE] Depends on how they attach to the rim, the worst I could think of is one of them coming off and getting in inside the wheel/suspension or hitting somebody. By the way I got a Prusa i3 kit on Monday, building it a bit at a time each day, one thing I found a bit weird is how some linear bearings feel a bit notchy, the balls seem to be all inside and I fitted them carefully, they don't need much pressure to move but sometimes they "hang" a bit and then move, tomorrow I'll try greasing them hopefully that does it, should I worry about them? EDIT: Greasing them did the job.

Imgur: [B]"My school's 3D printer just finished this beauty"[/B] [t]http://i.imgur.com/LDok9do.jpg[/t] god dammit i love imgur

[QUOTE=frozensoda;39969147]Hello, I should have my printer in just a week or so now. In the meantime I have been playing with google sketchup. I have no schooling beyond 10th grade so please don't be too harsh. I have been trying to make some kind of a tank/train mashup and I have been working on the tread. This is what I have come up with so far. [IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/16krqv.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/1e98at.png[/IMG] I also thought it woul dbe pretty cool to print some new pedals for my bicycle, and seeing that I might be the worlds largest Zelda fan I went with a triforce design. [IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/10rl0g4.png[/IMG] Again I am a retard and none of this stuff is done yet. I plan on making an 8 sided gear to drive the tracked vehicle, but its all just experimentation as I don't know any of the math involved. I am learning that as I need it. edit: I didn't really make it clear what the tred is for I have also designed a set of track that is geared like the teeth on the track, the idea is that it can go up very steep inclines while still being able to lift it straight off the track. I hope it works lol.[/QUOTE] if you're a retard i dont even want to know what i must be

Today I tried printing for the first time. (completed the Prusa build on Sunday) Well first of all Pronterface would start the job (as in say it started it) then do nothing, then it would do the same but turn off the hotend. It happened a couple of time, I tried Cura too and it started but the first time the filament didn't stick (was using 230 on the hotend), tried 240 and it seemed to stick better but got caught and got torn off, than it seems like it simply jammed as it wasn't coming out anymore or at least very slowly. So first try, jammed the nozzle hurray, I suppose starting with ABS (I ordered a spool of PLA and ABS but got two of ABS) was perhaps not the best idea. The filament extruded fine when doing test extrusions, I tried a bunch of 5mm extrusions, they came out about 3/4cm long, I suppose the 5mm refers to the amount of filament that goes in the hotend not the amount that's supposed to come out. I have a E3D V6 1.75mm (with 0.4 nozzle), the Marlin firmware was pre-configured by those who made the kit, I double checked and corrected stuff looking at some guides, mostly did PID autotuned both the hotend and heated bed. I tried 230/240 and 100 for the heated bed, extra strong hairspray on the bed. Should I get a roll of PLA and start off with that? Did I do something super stupid that my novice self didn't notice/think of? Also I tried running it at 260 to see if it would come out again and it started flowing out a bit, should I try that before disassembling to clean the nozzle?

Kind of sounds like your tension arm isn't setup properly. Take pictures of your extruder.

[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;46572286]Kind of sounds like your tension arm isn't setup properly. Take pictures of your extruder.[/QUOTE] I opened the guidler and the filament was all bunched up in there (before the PTFE tube), distracted by the print failures I didn't notice that the fan didn't turn on (thought it would do by itself, I even turned it on before printing with M106 but it turned off at the start of the job), that most likely caused the filament to melt in the tube. I tried pulling it out with pliers but it's stuck in there, should I just disassemble the hotend from the extruder and go from there or can I say heat up the hotend or something to pull the filament out?

What slicer are you using? Almost every one I know of gives an option to leave the fan always on. Make sure thats enabled. Sounds like your fanw asn't on and your extruder wasn't clamping the filament enough

[QUOTE=paindoc;46573030]What slicer are you using? Almost every one I know of gives an option to leave the fan always on. Make sure thats enabled. Sounds like your fanw asn't on and your extruder wasn't clamping the filament enough[/QUOTE] As I said in the first post I used Pronterface (so Slic3r) and Cura, both had the fan turned on checked, I even sent the M106 command (turn fan on) before starting but it got reset probably by the gcode instructions. I suppose the problem might have been that the fan was set to turn on after the first layer and as the first layer never managed to be completed in any of the attempts the fan never came on, I have since then changed the settings to force the fan on at all times just in case. The extruder grabbed the filament fine, as I said (and found out between the first and second post) it's the fan that didn't cool the heatsink and the filament melted all the way up in the extruder not as much as at the nozzle but enough to not let the above filament go down. That seems to be the explanation on the E3D and other forums that fits the best, the question now is more of which way is best to clean it up, more specifically it's there's a way of doing it without having to remove the hotend. If there isn't I will remove the hotend and then remove the PTFE tube and the filament from it that shouldn't be too hard it's just time consuming to remove the whole thing.

Welcome to 3d printing, where the silliest of mistakes set you back 3 hours and the worst of mistakes set you back hundreds of dollars.

Don't hook the E3Ds fan to "fan control", that's for fans blowing air onto the melted material. You should be powering the E3D fan as directly from the power supply as you feel comfortable with. Personally I have a 9v battery and a switch powering that fan. [editline]25th November 2014[/editline] On the plus side, you have a hotend designed to be disassembled.

[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;46574823]Don't hook the E3Ds fan to "fan control", that's for fans blowing air onto the melted material. You should be powering the E3D fan as directly from the power supply as you feel comfortable with. Personally I have a 9v battery and a switch powering that fan. [editline]25th November 2014[/editline] On the plus side, you have a hotend designed to be disassembled.[/QUOTE] The fan is connected to the D9 terminal block on the RAMPS board is that direct enough? I do however have a second 40mm fan (blowing on the RAMPS) also connected there, I think I will try to remove that second fan, I also could, if needed, plug it (the hotend fan of course) straight in the empty 12v terminal blocks on the PSU. I have been reading a bit on the E3D forum and it seems that cooling especially the lowest fin is crucial. Also setting up retraction properly, I will continue to investigate on that. I also have disassembled the hotend and put the nozzle (not really clogged but for good measure) and the heat break in acetone in an closed container. The filament was/is stuck in the heat break, the PTFE tube can rotate but wont come out of the heat break so I put it all in the acetone, it shouldn't affect it but I have another piece in case it does. Basically there's the heat break with 6/7cm of PTFE tube sticking out and ABS going from one end to the other.

[QUOTE=BoSoZoku;46575047]The fan is connected to the D9 terminal block on the RAMPS board is that direct enough? I do however have a second 40mm fan (blowing on the RAMPS) also connected there, I think I will try to remove that second fan, I also could, if needed, plug it (the hotend fan of course) straight in the empty 12v terminal blocks on the PSU. I have been reading a bit on the E3D forum and it seems that cooling especially the lowest fin is crucial. Also setting up retraction properly, I will continue to investigate on that. I also have disassembled the hotend and put the nozzle (not really clogged but for good measure) and the heat break in acetone in an closed container. The filament was/is stuck in the heat break, the PTFE tube can rotate but wont come out of the heat break so I put it all in the acetone, it shouldn't affect it but I have another piece in case it does. Basically there's the heat break with 6/7cm of PTFE tube sticking out and ABS going from one end to the other.[/QUOTE] D9 is more or less supposed to be the output for a print fan, however the extruder fan can be powered by it if you configure Slic3r or whatever you are using to constantly keep the fan at 100%. A better option is connecting your fan to the 12V-AUX output. [t]http://i.imgur.com/ilo5XMV.png[/t]

I just got a PrintinZ build plate and it it seriously the best thing I've purchased in a long time. Adhesion is amazing and it flexes when I need to remove a print. Also means I can buy an inductive bed sensor for auto levelling. I highly recommend them for anyone who's been considering one.

[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;46574823] On the plus side, you have a hotend designed to be disassembled.[/QUOTE] be very careful with the heatbreak though, the little part between the heatsink and the block is very fragile and can bend easily if you torque it too hard while assembling/disassembling it.

[QUOTE=Timebomb575;46578978]be very careful with the heatbreak though, the little part between the heatsink and the block is very fragile and can bend easily if you torque it too hard while assembling/disassembling it.[/QUOTE] Yep, even when assembling it the first time I was very careful, that's why I also didn't feel very conformable pulling the filament out, now that I know it's stuck in there I'm happy I didn't. Now it's still soaking in acetone, I'm going to get some pure acetone though as the one I had was nail polish remover and it's not doing much other than softening the plastic a bit. Otherwise I could try with a heat gun or a torch to melt the plastic inside or maybe even reinstalling it and heating the hotend enough to let the plastic flow out.

I snapped my Y axis belt like 4 weeks ago, ordered a replacement straight away. 4 weeks later its still not here. I even paid like double the price to get it shipped from Europe rather than China so it gets here faster, but seems like this might have been a mistake.

It goes from China to Europe to you

Hey guys, I'm currently working on printing out a Civil protection mask and I've found this awesome epoxy stuff that makes smoothing out your 3d prints a lot easier. [url]http://www.reynoldsam.com/product/xtc-3d/[/url]. It's a hell of a lot easier to work with then bondo, and since it auto smooths itself you don't need to sand as much. The only thing that sucks is, they only place that sells them rips you off on shipping (20$). here is one sanded part and two painted parts. [url]http://imgur.com/a/remji[/url]

I've been using filler primer and high grit sanding belts, works great.

Hmm I may need to try that.

An update, I managed to clean the heat break and nozzle after letting them soak for about a day in 99% acetone, put everything back together and with the fan always on it prints just fine now. Since then I re-leveled the bed and now I'm trying to get the first layer to fill up nicely but I don't know what to do anymore, as you can see (from left to right in chronological order) I tried both Slic3r (first 3 and the last) and Cura (4,5,6), I changed the first layers line width multiplier in Slic3r and the shell in Cura (among other things like temp, first layer eight etc) to get less gaps but it still won't come out filled, even though it fills the second layer (and up) up to the edges just fine, the last test was even made on a raft and even if it's much better than the others it's still not solid, I'm starting to think I might be trying to achieve something that's "not possible" with my setup. (I'm using a 0.4 nozzle) This is mostly about aesthetics but also to not have the perimeters of the first layers peel off with the brim. (that is pretty much solved) I'm printing ABS at about 240 to 250 and 100 to 115 on the bed, 1.75 filament, 0.4 nozzle, 0.3 layers height. How silly am I being for chasing this stuff? [url=http://imgur.com/a/R2nSH]Here[/url] you can see some prints from the first few days of having the printed. (I only have a couple of other but those were the very first three prints and are pretty similar other than a worst first layer due to nozzle height being too high) Also I'm using hairspray on a mirror now I'm wondering if I should try glue or abs slurry instead any opinions?

That looks really nice. 240-250°C seems pretty hot for ABS, but hey! results!

[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;46621106]That looks really nice. 240-250°C seems pretty hot for ABS, but hey! results![/QUOTE] To be honest I didn't even really try it under 240 (don't even know why!), I'll give it a go!

I print at 215°C, but I have oozing issues.

[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;46621317]I print at 215°C, but I have oozing issues.[/QUOTE] You mean you print at 215 to solve the oozing or that you have it even at 215? I presume the former but you never know! I tried 230 and it printed fine by the way, although Cura's brims has gotten all wobbly in the last few prints (before trying 230 as well), don't really know why, the parts came out fine, Slic3r's brim is nice and straight. The major difference (although I didn't try to print the same part both in 230 and 240+) from before seems to be the tolerances, the model comes out more precise/closer to the 3d file, which is great. Also less blobs/strings (the puny ones that come off easily). I might try to go even a bit lower than 230, the filament specs says 220-240 so it should be fine.

I have oozing issues at 215. And I never actually got around to printing a mount for my E3D that I was satisfied with so I'm still using the bog standard Solidoodle-2 hotend that has a max temp of 230 before it shuts down.

Finally got our piece of shit DeltaMaker going again. It just needed a new press fitting on the extrusion mechanism side, but it took forever to get. Now it's as happy as it's ever been. Which is to say, worse than a MaketBot and unbelievably noisy. But at least it printed the calibration cube okay. I've got it working on the MAKEbot for a more complex test. [t]http://i.imgur.com/3Jojpfp.jpg[/t]

Finally had a chance to start printing again! Had to go up to 70 Celcius on my heated bed to compensate for the wintery temperatures. [t]http://i.imgur.com/696eQlN.jpg[/t] Now all I need to solve is the freaking gobs of molten plastic dripping from the sides of my hotend all the time :v: