3D Printing Services?

[adyj1]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

Having started with Ender 3, which was at the time sensible offer, I'm reluctant to recommend it at this time. I've heavily modded mine to get it to print the way I want it. Overall cost of all modifications is higher then much more serious printer.

Vlaiv, how old was your ender 3? I don't know if you've seen the newer V3 version, but a very experienced 3d printing chum of mine got an ender v3 and it 'just works'. Out of the box it was doing in-place articulated print jobs that I was very envious of. (I have a heavily modded original Ender 5).

If it falls in your budget I think the ender v3 is a great choice. 

Ady

[Ratlet]

Depending on the size of your 3D printer and enclosure can be pretty simple to make.  I built mine out of a couple of IKEA lack tables 

I went for a prusa mini+.  Small print area, but I rarely need to print larger items than it can handle (so far at least).

It's a bit long in the tooth now (an older design, although prusa still support it, they've just released input shaping which makes it much quicker) but I've heard good things about bambu.

It is a good hobby.  I like designing parts.  Especially useful in astronomy as quite simple parts seem to have lots of zeros attached when you buy them in this hobby.

[vlaiv]

9 hours ago, adyj1 said:

Vlaiv, how old was your ender 3? I don't know if you've seen the newer V3 version, but a very experienced 3d printing chum of mine got an ender v3 and it 'just works'. Out of the box it was doing in-place articulated print jobs that I was very envious of. (I have a heavily modded original Ender 5).

If it falls in your budget I think the ender v3 is a great choice. 

Ady

Here is a summary of things that I've done to my Ender 3 (I thought about it after I made above post as I never really listed all the things that I've done to it).

I started with stock Ender 3 v2 which was about 220e.

I added CR touch to it for about 30e.

Dual lead screw setup for 35e (AliExpress).

I made lack enclosure from two lack tables, acrylic side panels and Klipperized the printer with Banana PI4 for about 180 euro total (two lack tables, banana pi4, custom acrylic side panels, led strip, 12v psu, 12/5v step down converter, some magnets, blower fans for activated charcoal filter ... ).

I upgraded to Microswiss all metal hotend with hardened steel nozzle - ~60euro (don't use hardened steel nozzle unless you really need to - regular brass ones are better for regular materials).

Another 75euro on linear rails.

~50 for Orbiter v2.0 extruder

at least 30-40 euro to some bits & bobs - like: two different sets of bed leveling springs/silicone spacers (trying to get ones that are good), different couplers for z-axis - trying to solve vertical banding issues / backlash and stuff and so on ...

Let's sum that up.  That is close to 700e.

While my machine is printing fine now - it's still not printing at the speeds of P1S and the time and frustration that I had to put in making all the above modifications ...

I'm only reluctant to recommend P1S because it's not using open source firmware so you can't easily mod it if need arises. After all of the above - I'm now harboring the feeling that proper way to solve issues is DIY route. Of course - I'm aware that for regular user that does not want to tinker - it is much better to have product that just work, and from what I've seen online - P1S is just such a printer - it works, it's easy to use, you don't really need to fix it in any way.

But having said all the above - I just went to see the Ender 3 V3 - and I'm surprised by amount of changes they made - at least to Ender 3 V3 - regular version (not SE and KE). It has most of the things I would change on ender - linear rods instead of V-slot rollers, Core XZ configuration, All metal hotend, Klipper (I don't like it is "creality OS based on klipper" instead of just plain klipper). I'm just wondering how well will it perform out of the box and how much tweaking would it need to run properly.

 

 

[saac]

I  bought an Ender 5 back in 2019 and have largely resisted going down the upgrade path; it's been a thoroughly reliable and capable printer. It just works so I've little cause to upgrade anything. What I have replaced are largely consumable items such as the bowden cable and one of the fans. The only thing i'm really considering is to give it wifi control via a raspberry pi controller. It's been used to pint a range of items from Paul Gehrlach's Low Spec Spectrometer,  an adjustable rising bed for my laser cutter, various threaded adapters for astro use, and various models and items for use in class (DNA model, antibody and antigen model, aircraft projectile cradle).  One item though puts a smile on my face each time I use it - it's an dial gauge adapter that makes adjusting the end float on my mgb stub axle a much simpler task.  I use Fusion 360 for modelling and the standard Creality slicer which have both worked seamlessly for me. 

Jim 

 

Edited April 5 by saac

[vlaiv]

22 minutes ago, saac said:

It just works so I've little cause to upgrade anything.

I'm guessing that selection of materials that you've printed include PLA and possibly PETG.

For those materials, stock printers just simply work and if one is not overly keen on getting the last ounce of precision from the printer - they will suffice.

Here is an example of what might not be possible with stock printer:

Above is a cam shaft that is a part of some crazy design that I recently made. It is 1:324 reduction box with zero backlash and no contact between output and input sections except for bearings. It uses magnetic coupling to do the job. It is part of my effort to create simple / affordable EQ mount that is in EQ5/EQ6 class - yet it will be fraction of the cost with much better performance (I hope).

Due to need for precision - above is not single piece but is rather assembly of 5 parts. Otherwise, I'd need to use supports for printing and it would be very difficult to get smooth surfaces where they need to be. Also - assembly with other parts would be impossible.

Normal precision of 3d printer is often quoted to be +/- 0.2mm. I don't see why it has to be that low - as most components are capable of higher precision (even 0.4mm nozzle won't suddenly extrude 25% more material to overflow for 0.1mm on each side of the print). With nicely tuned printer one can regularly be in 0.05-0.08mm range. In any case - if you have z axis issues like backlash (due to binding because poor quality control) or perhaps you needed to bring down nozzle for best layer adhesion (manual leveling) - you prints will be always 0.1-0.2mm lower then they should be. This is "within the specs" for 3d printer - yet it is constant error to one side.

When you have 5 parts that are on average 0.1-0.2mm shorter - whole assembly will get 0.5-1mm shorter and when you want everything to fit together with ~1mm tolerances that starts to be a problem.

I often had to resort to various tricks to get the parts to be of good enough dimensions (mind you - in "everyday use" - like for models or large single printed parts - these dimensional errors are tiny and often imperceptible) - including "baking in" changes to the model itself - which is poor practice if you want to share your design.

Before I did mods to my printer, printing 0.75mm pitch threads was hit and miss affair. Now I can be sure that they will work on the first go with my modified printer and what amazed me the most - Bambu Lab P1S did so with very inexperienced person operating it (slicing and all - I just provided the model in FreeCad) 2 days after arriving (It was probably 3rd or 4th print and first custom one / not provided by vendor on SD card).

I'm sure most of printers out there work. Some of them even work well out of the box. It is just the question of capability of the printer - for example if it will print nylon, tpu or ASA out of the box (high temps, direct drive, enclosure - perhaps even actively heated, good bed adhesion and so on ...) and the hassle involved to get to result you are after.

 

 

[saac]

I use PLA, PTEG and ABS depending on application, haven't had a need to use tpu or nylon. Since starting in 2019 I've never had any problem with bed adhesion and the magnetic bed plate works perfectly making easy release of the components.  I don't use an enclosure, the printer is situated in my workshop so it does benefit from an extractor. When printing with ABS I stabilize the temperature around the build volume with kingspan insulation boards around the printer frame but these are not permanent.  My bed levelling is done old school, manually with feeler gauges as it should be. I keep my filament in a conditioned environment and not sitting on the reel exposed when not in use. From experience in helping others and from running the 3 printers in school most problems arise from inaccurate bed levelling and filament issues.  If an Ender 5 is setup properly and maintained well it will deliver without major upgrades. 

Jim