3D printer supplies

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Shakey
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by Shakey »

Yeah I use blue tape and sometimes the bed adhesion is so good there's no way to get it off but to rip the tape up with it on. When i added a heated bed there is no way to remove a print while the bed is still warm, you have to let it cool down! :P I've had to use a small hammer to knock parts off the bed before!
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
EpicentrE
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by EpicentrE »

Finally got my printer finished today (the wiring is such a pain in the butt that I kept putting it off), got it calibrated and did some testing.

First of all, I tried to print directly onto the glass with hairspray, but even though I was printing something with a big surface area in contact with the bed, it still kept popping off after a few layers. I switched to the fixpad and had no further adhesion problems at all (apart from where the footprint was too small).

The first thing I was printing was a Horde pendant, which I chose because of it's simple, flat design and large surface area. It came out really well:
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Next, I decided to try something with a few curves and some very simple support structures. This Poro also came out well, although I learned that pausing mid-print causes an obviously visible line between the layers where you paused:
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Finally, I wanted something big, curvy, and requiring a load of support structures so I could play around and learn what was, and wasn't possible. I chose Starbug from Red Dwarf, although I only ended up having enough filament to print the main body - and even for that I had to swap to a different colour part way through:
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This took me about 5 or 6 tries to get right, which was part of the reason why I didn't have enough filament left to complete it. However it was a really valuable learning experience; I learned what you can and can't do with support structures, and that you need a reasonably sized footprint and/or raft to help with bed adhesion. In the end, I printed it standing up vertically on it's back, with a support structure holding up the flat plane where the engine piece would sit. I noticed that some of the support structures which were generated for this weren't actually connected to the base, however during printing these pieces slowly coalesced in mid-air due to being held to other structures with tiny strings of plastic, until they could support themselves. It was quite odd to see, and while I don't know whether that's actually a supported technique or just a bug in the software and me getting lucky, it was very interesting.

I'm just using PLA on a non-heated bed at the moment, but look forward to being able to start prototyping robot bits until I can get my heated bed.
Scott Fyfe-Jamieson, Captain of Epic Robotics. Champion of AWS38/41/42.
http://www.epicrobotics.co.uk
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Shakey
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by Shakey »

Rather interestingly HK just released their own printer!
http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__ ... house.html?

It actually looks like a solid well designed machine, it'll be interesting to see when the reviews come out. Looks like the exterior could be acrylic though.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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Rhys
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by Rhys »

Finally got mine set up over the last day or so. Aside from a few minor issues (did anybody else have to manually change the plug on the extruder motor, or was that just mine?), I'm amazed with how well it works out of the box. I was getting prepared to have to fine tune things and spend days calibrating settings to get it printing well, but it seems to have just be performing faultlessly right from the first print.

The only issues I had were a snapped x-axis tensioner. This was due to me trying to follow Scott's advice and using a drill press to bed the nut in. Klutz that I am, I snapped it in half. But it's super glued back together very well, and a replacement is next in the queue to be printed. And the only other issue was the extruder motor being wired incorrectly. The axis were moving, but no filament was coming out. It was a case of trial and error to get it working properly, but it eventually fired into life.

The fix pads are great, and Cura is also fantastic. It's nice to just upload the STL, change a few variables and not have to worry about support structures or print settings.

So far I've only printed out a few animals I got from thingverse.... Sorry for the complete lack of relation to antweights, but I was mainly checking detail levels and I was very impressed. I have 2 chassis already drawn I was going to send to shapeways for the last AWS, so I might just see how they print out. I assumed they would need some modification to be compatible with the i3, but judging on what it's done so far I might just see how they go anyway.

These prints were on the lowest setting, but they still look quite detailed. Sorry for the massive images, I forgot to resize them before uploading...

A tiny mole... 3cm length:

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A pug, 5cm length
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I'll hopefully be trying some robot related stuff over the coming days.
Last edited by Rhys on Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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peterwaller
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by peterwaller »

I found that you can print directly from the .dae file ( which Sketchup can export in ) with Cura which saves having to seperatly convert the files to STL.
In fact if I import in STL the images are much smaller, the chap in the shop said it was probably due to inch / mm conversion making it 2.54 times smaller but I havent looked into that as dae is much easier.
EpicentrE
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by EpicentrE »

I've been using Slic3r so far, just because it was the first thing that came up in a Google result. Would people recommend Cura over it?
Scott Fyfe-Jamieson, Captain of Epic Robotics. Champion of AWS38/41/42.
http://www.epicrobotics.co.uk
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Rhys
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by Rhys »

The STL exporter plugin seems to be ok for me. I tried drawing and printing some gears last night and they came out pretty much the size I was expecting. The DAE thing is handy though, as all my old drawings are saved in that format.

As for Cura vs Slic3r, I've only had chance to use Cura so far so I can't comment. But Cura is very user-friendly, so it gets my vote. I might have a look at Slic3r tonight though.
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Rhys
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by Rhys »

I had a go at printing off a chassis for my new spinner tonight. It was one I'd intended to get done at shapeways, so I was expecting a few issues printing it on the i3. But it handled it quite well. The only issue was that the right hand side became slightly unstuck while printing, so the fork is a bit raised off the floor. I'm not sure if it's because my bed isn't level, or the fixpad has been a bit damaged, or maybe something else. It's not a huge issue but I'd like to get it sorted.

Having downloaded Slic3r, I'd say I definitely prefer Cura. The support structures are easy to add, work well and are easy to remove. It's also very easy to set up. The only issue I have is that it's taking longer than Cura estimates to print something. The chassis I printed was estimated at 3hr 56m, but ended up taking over 5 hours.

Again it's on low quality, but would be acceptable to use in an actual antweight. I don't think I have the heart to wait 11 hours for a print....

During printing:
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Final print with support structures:
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Final print with support structures removed:
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Last edited by Rhys on Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Shakey
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by Shakey »

I can't seem to see the pictures in your post. :S
Last edited by Shakey on Sat Apr 25, 2015 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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BeligerAnt
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Re: 3D printer supplies

Post by BeligerAnt »

Rhys, the dropbox links you have used for the images return a 403 error (permission denied). Although the URL seems to suggest a "Public" folder it requires a log-in to view.
The tags in your posts are correctly formatted but the permissions prevent the images form being displayed.
Sorry I can't help you with Dropbox set-up, maybe someone else knows what you need to do...
Gary, Team BeligerAnt
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