3D Printers

[JamesF]

Ah, right.  I'd looked at them in the past but never really thought about filament.  With my current printer the spiral wrap around the cables pretty much supports them anyhow, so I'd not investigated further.

James

[Mognet]

I have the spiral wrap on my printer too. Looking at the cable chain you linked to before (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3091780) I suspect it works best with particular printers and filaments, and it looks like the author hasn't posted any original CAD files for tolerance adjustment, etc. WIth the right dimensions the links should clip together nicely

[Stub Mandrel]

I discovered this peculiar German 'tank' online last night, there's one in a Russian museum: http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2-german-prototypes/kugelpanzer/

I will be making a 3D printed one.

[Gina]

Weird!!  Wonder why it was wider at the top.  Wider at the bottom would have been more stable.

[Stub Mandrel]

4 minutes ago, Gina said:

Weird!!  Wonder why it was wider at the top.  Wider at the bottom would have been more stable.

So do I!

But it was very small. Only 1.5m diameter, so just a single seater, presumably the occupant sat on top of the engine which would have been very heavy. As it is essentially a 'ball' I suspect that if it fell over it would roll to have the engine at the bottom  - I imagine it would be a wild ride on anything other than tarmac though.

[Gina]

And very noisy!

[JamesF]

It's a penny farthing tank!

James

[Gina]

Made a working cable chain with peg & hole, clip together links with PETG filament - flexible enough to work.  PLA wasn't.

[JamesF]

Since this appears to be the 3d-printing thread of the moment, I have noticed that the bottom layer or two of my prints can be a bit iffy once they start to cover perhaps more than 20% of the print area, with poor bed adhesion, if the print starts as soon as the bed and hot end are up to temperature.  I'm guessing this is down to uneven temperatures across the bed even when the thermocouple claims everything is good.  If I heat the bed up for a few minutes before actually starting the printing process the adhesion is much improved.

I must investigate whether this delay can be added in the configuration.

James

[Dr_Ju_ju]

you can usually add a delay in the gcode, so should be scriptable in the slicer...

[Gina]

The thermistor is usually in the centre of the bed heater and only tells you the temperature there.  The temperature could be anything elsewhere over the bed.  Leaving the bed at working temperature for a few minutes before printing may allow it to heat the bed better.

[Stub Mandrel]

Set the initial temperature 5 or 10 degrees warmer, then set the final temperature to normal.

(If using Cura)

[Gina]

I use gcode within Slic3r to do similar things eg. turn both heaters on then wait until hot before running rest of print then turn heaters off at end of print and wait for hotend to cool before turning printer (and cooling fan) off.

[Alien 13]

Might be a daft question but are there any good tiny precision printers around, ideally I would want an absolute max print size of 80 mm cubed?

Alan

[upahill]

9 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

Might be a daft question but are there any good tiny precision printers around, ideally I would want an absolute max print size of 80 mm cubed?

Alan

SLA printers are pretty good for precision stuff, I have an old Formlabs 1+ and the quality is amazing in comparison to the melted plastic type of printer. Comes with a large cost and fuss overhead though so unless critical it rarely gets used. How much precision do you need?

[Dr_Ju_ju]

If you could get hold of one, the Wanhao D7 Plus  (https://www.wanhaouk.com/collections/frontpage/products/d7-plus) would be a reasonable starter for resin printer at a more sensible initial cost, but the resin is quite expensive compared to filament, as well as the additional handling that is required.

[Stub Mandrel]

A friend of mine used to have a very well made UP printer with about 100mm square envelope and occupying quite a small space.

Cost about seven times as much as my i3 and the quality of print was almost as good, but it was an early machine.

[Gina]

I had an UP Plus 2 - very expensive - printed well but I wore it out quite quickly.  Spare parts were also over-priced as it was a proprietary printer and everything non-standard.  Actually, I still have it but it doesn't work any more.  Even the software and firmware was proprietary and it would only print ABS.  It was supposed to print PLA as well but it didn't.  That was several years ago - it served it's purpose and enabled me to produce bigger and better printers.

[Atreta]

I just finished a print of  a saturn V rocket model i found on thingiverse. this is the model i used: 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:45316

We had a blackout due to a heavy rain that hit tonight and the resume function worked as it should. The print came out really nice.  

Here is a picture of it: 

Edited December 22, 2018 by Atreta

[PeterW]

Impressive! I am busy trying to wear Ultimaker 2+ out. Feedtubes and nozzles seem the only thing that need refreshing. Need to print yet more stuff!

Peter

[Gina]

I'm currently printing new parts for my Giant printer on my Titan printer.

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I thought Titan's were bigger than Giants....

But for printers, the Hang Printer beats them all (https://hangprinter.org/) unless your into industrial wall printing....

[Gina]

Well, maybe - I don't really know.  The Titan was a big printer when I built it.  Maybe I need a better name for the Giant - Gargantuan or Gigantic comes to mind but they're rather long.  As things are now the Titan has become the "GinaRep Standard", or "GinaRep Medium".  And what happens if I build an even bigger box type printer???

Yes, I know about hang-printers and had considered it.  Haven't the space at the moment.

Edited December 22, 2018 by Gina

[PeterW]

Currently the yanks are probably in the lead with BAAM 

unless one you fancies making a bigger one ? Wonder when we’ll see a big consumer machine that has a screw extruded on?

 

PEter

[Gina]

I considered a screw driven extruder taking pellets - even bought the pellets but decided that filament was easier even for nozzles bigger than 3mm.