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No argument from me there. The closest thing to "just work" is to submit your model to shapeways.com . Other than that any home printer will require some amount of work. But the main benefits (from an "interested mainly in end result" perspective) are not having a multi-week turnaround, and the ability to print very, very cheaply.
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Dec 31, 2012 07:56
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If you buy a commercial machine, most of the fiddling is software -- firmware and the slicing software. You'll make or break your quality and speed there.
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Dec 31, 2012 20:41
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I've built and calibrated an ultimaker and a printbot jr for our local hackerspace. (Xerocraft in Tucson). I've been using both of them so much that I think it's time for a printer of my own. I really can't go backwards on quality from the ultimaker so I'm looking into printers with the same, if not better resolution. I'm technically inclined and poor so I'm thinking the prusa mendal or the mendal max. Has anyone had experience with either of these? Are the prints on par with the ultimaker? And is there a print quality difference between the two?
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Jan 1, 2013 18:56
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ADMRL Perkins posted:I've built and calibrated an ultimaker and a printbot jr for our local hackerspace. (Xerocraft in Tucson). I've been using both of them so much that I think it's time for a printer of my own. I really can't go backwards on quality from the ultimaker so I'm looking into printers with the same, if not better resolution. I'm technically inclined and poor so I'm thinking the prusa mendal or the mendal max. Has anyone had experience with either of these? Are the prints on par with the ultimaker? And is there a print quality difference between the two? I built a mendelmax and think it prints ok. I typically print at around 80-100mm/s with a 0.5mm nozzle. Mine could probably run faster but not by a factor of 2 or 3 without shaking apart.
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Jan 1, 2013 18:59
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That's not bad speed at all. We generally run our ultimaker around 60-80mm/s because of the extrusion issues that arise. I've run it at 300mm/s and it kept up for a few layers until the filament jammed. Would you say the overall quality is comparable?
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Jan 2, 2013 01:24
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ADMRL Perkins posted:That's not bad speed at all. We generally run our ultimaker around 60-80mm/s because of the extrusion issues that arise. I've run it at 300mm/s and it kept up for a few layers until the filament jammed. Would you say the overall quality is comparable? Unfortunately, I've never seen an ultimaker in action, or one of its prints.
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Jan 2, 2013 01:29
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I run my makergear M2 at 200+mm/s and extrusion jamming has never taken place- I do sometimes have issues with layer adhesion (moreso at super-high speed), and I've had a few prints foul up due to a Z axis slip that I still can't identify the cause of. The makergear extruder seems to have the most reliable extrusion mechanism- it actually runs a screw with very deep cuts paralleled to the filament, meaning that there are 9+points of contact with the filament. I can't comment on print quality vs an ultimaker unfortunately as I have never seen one either.
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Jan 2, 2013 04:26
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ADMRL Perkins posted:I've built and calibrated an ultimaker and a printbot jr for our local hackerspace. (Xerocraft in Tucson). I've been using both of them so much that I think it's time for a printer of my own. I really can't go backwards on quality from the ultimaker so I'm looking into printers with the same, if not better resolution. I'm technically inclined and poor so I'm thinking the prusa mendal or the mendal max. Has anyone had experience with either of these? Are the prints on par with the ultimaker? And is there a print quality difference between the two? As far as kits go, nobody has the the quality of a well tuned ultimaker. Most kits go the opposite way and try to go for cheaper. The last few pages have had a number of complaints about build quality and support of the cheaper kits out there. Broken parts, missing parts, poorly matched gears etc. The mendel derivatives are a special beast though. When you self source it, you can get top quality parts and still come in way cheaper than an ultimaker. You don't need to work in a profit margin, but what you don't spend in money, you do spend in time. I'm not familiar with the new mendelmax kit, only the old one that had a BOM. But it was effectively just a stiffer mendel, but otherwise used standard reprap bits. I don't know how good the new one's extruder is, and that's definitely one of the things that directly impacts print quality. The stiffness that the original mendelmax's extruded aluminum chassis would help it keep quality at higher speed, but at low speeds would have minimal effect. The important things on any printer are good extruder(hot and cold ends), good belt gears, straight rods, then linear bearings, and shaft couplings. Basically the mechanical bits. Mendels vary from pretty bad to excellent depending on how much care you put into it. Dialed in mendels are pretty much the only people other than the ultimaker that is actively working on only getting layer heights below .1 mm. Pretty much everyone else is happy considering .3 to .1 mm to be high quality.
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Jan 2, 2013 08:09
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Aside from rigidity, the other nice thing is that the Mendels have a billion different nuts, bolts, screws, threaded rod, washers, etc. The MendelMax is practically all the same bolt and t-nuts. There are a lot of them still but at least it's not a goddamn nightmare. The aluminum extrusions also allow you to square it up a lot easier than a normal Mendel.
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Jan 2, 2013 16:26
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The secret to my MM was to use vegetable oil to help tap the aluminum. Also, the BOM materials is inconsistent with the printed parts they list on thingiverse (BOM uses all 8mm rods and bearings, thingiverse uses both 8 and 10 mm).
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Jan 3, 2013 04:34
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Thanks for the input, I think I'm ready to take a crazy plunge. I'll keep everyone up to date, I'll post any spectacular failures and I'll try to do a side by side comparison against the ultimaker when I'm done. Spazzle could you clarify what you mean about the difference in sizes between the BOM and the .STL files on thingiverse? I assume you mean these files http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12645
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Jan 3, 2013 05:32
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ADMRL Perkins posted:Thanks for the input, I think I'm ready to take a crazy plunge. I'll keep everyone up to date, I'll post any spectacular failures and I'll try to do a side by side comparison against the ultimaker when I'm done. Spazzle could you clarify what you mean about the difference in sizes between the BOM and the .STL files on thingiverse? I assume you mean these files http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12645 The bom on mendelmax.com said to get 8mm smooth rods and linear bearings. The printed parts in the mm file on thingiverse, possibly what you linked to, use 10mm rods and bearings for the z axis and 8mm for x and y. The parts for all 8mm rods exist on thingiverse if you look around, or buy the appropriate 10mm rods. Maybe they fixed it in the past couple of months.
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Jan 3, 2013 06:01
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ADMRL Perkins posted:Thanks for the input, I think I'm ready to take a crazy plunge. I'll keep everyone up to date, I'll post any spectacular failures and I'll try to do a side by side comparison against the ultimaker when I'm done. Spazzle could you clarify what you mean about the difference in sizes between the BOM and the .STL files on thingiverse? I assume you mean these files http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12645 What hotend do you plan on using? I usually recommend the j-head, but a lot of people get good results from an arcol. If you go with a jhead get it from one of the reputable vendors, like the guy who actually designed it, not an ebay special. The ebay clones have some questionable modifications. I'd also like to point out that that thingiverse link also has a link to a newer version of the mendelmax. I have no idea how or even if this affects the BOM stl discrepancy.
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Jan 3, 2013 06:52
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Very much considering a Solidoodle 3. I like the large print area, don't want to mess around with a kit and it sounds like the default settings have been fine tuned a bit better than the 2 so there's not as much fiddling with the print settings to get a quality print. I am also considering the Up! Mini but the print area of the Solidoodle for pretty much the same price seems to be worth the potential hassle of having to mess around with settings to make the quality as nice.
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Jan 3, 2013 10:29
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Spazzle posted:The bom on mendelmax.com said to get 8mm smooth rods and linear bearings. The printed parts in the mm file on thingiverse, possibly what you linked to, use 10mm rods and bearings for the z axis and 8mm for x and y. The parts for all 8mm rods exist on thingiverse if you look around, or buy the appropriate 10mm rods. Maybe they fixed it in the past couple of months. There are quite a few variations on the standard MM 1.5, and the rod lengths can vary slightly. Where are you getting the plastic parts from? I bought mine from ebay, put the frame together and then worked out what length smooth rods I needed, saving some money as I got away with shorter lengths than specified on the BOM.
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Jan 3, 2013 14:09
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evilmonkeh posted:There are quite a few variations on the standard MM 1.5, and the rod lengths can vary slightly. Where are you getting the plastic parts from? I bought mine from ebay, put the frame together and then worked out what length smooth rods I needed, saving some money as I got away with shorter lengths than specified on the BOM. The problem was rod width, not length.
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Jan 3, 2013 14:21
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Spazzle posted:The secret to my MM was to use vegetable oil to help tap the aluminum. Oh yeah, definitely use some kind of cutting fluid when working with aluminum, unless you want to ruin your taps/drill bit/etc. I used 3-in-1 oil for tapping the extrusions for my ORD.
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Jan 3, 2013 15:15
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I installed Makerware on OSX and didn't realize it didn't support dual extrusion and now ReplicatorG can't find my bot even though Makerware can.  I've tried killing/stopping Conveyor, but no dice. Any ideas? edit: I'm retarded. I had an Arduino plugged in and was idiotically picking the wrong port. This question never happened. Pimblor fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Jan 4, 2013 |
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Jan 4, 2013 03:03
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Got my B9 Creator resin in the mail today....now all I need is the machine!
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Jan 4, 2013 03:58
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evilmonkeh posted:There are quite a few variations on the standard MM 1.5, and the rod lengths can vary slightly. Where are you getting the plastic parts from? I bought mine from ebay, put the frame together and then worked out what length smooth rods I needed, saving some money as I got away with shorter lengths than specified on the BOM. I'm going to print them on our ultimaker, so at least if I mess up size I can do another run.
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Jan 5, 2013 02:49
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I just bought a Mendel kit from the RepRapPro guys (a company founded by the original reprap designers from Bath). The biggest advantage over any of the numerous kickstarter-funded projects is probably that they're in the UK. I'm looking forward to endless evenings of tweaking!
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Jan 6, 2013 20:54
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What is everyone making now? I've made numerous gewgaws and knickknacks and quite a few parts to repair things or upgrade older projects but nothing of any consequence. I'm curious to know if everyone just makes shot glasses or if I'm missing out on something.
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Jan 7, 2013 02:19
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Hu Fa Ted posted:What is everyone making now? I've made numerous gewgaws and knickknacks and quite a few parts to repair things or upgrade older projects but nothing of any consequence. I'm curious to know if everyone just makes shot glasses or if I'm missing out on something. I'm now obsessed with making life-size objects on my ancient MakerBot Cupcake. The last one I finished is this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:35359 Here's a preview of my current project:  It's 384mm tall (just over 15 inches?) and I'm in the middle of cleaning up the parts for assembly. Like the Alexander the Great bust, it took just over forty hours of printing. Also, I've just started working at 3D Phacktory and got to play with an Objet 500 for the first time. Soooo coool.  The cleanup on the stuff coming out of the Objet is pretty interesting.. Everything is covered in support material that has to manually water jetted off, then soaked in lye for an hour or two and rinsed.
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Jan 7, 2013 08:21
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Hu Fa Ted posted:What is everyone making now? I've made numerous gewgaws and knickknacks and quite a few parts to repair things or upgrade older projects but nothing of any consequence. I'm curious to know if everyone just makes shot glasses or if I'm missing out on something. I spent the week after christmas printing out a prototype scale model of a snowmobile sled my father has designed. Part of that was designing printable shock absorbers that can take springs stolen from pens.
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Jan 7, 2013 22:25
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techknight posted:I'm now obsessed with making life-size objects on my ancient MakerBot Cupcake. The last one I finished is this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:35359 Holy christ. 40 hours? I still can't get my Replicator to print on the left extruder for more than 10 minutes. The right one seems to be ok. I have printed a small army of creepers for presents, everyone seems to love those. Anta posted:I spent the week after christmas printing out a prototype scale model of a snowmobile sled my father has designed. Part of that was designing printable shock absorbers that can take springs stolen from pens. That sounds pretty slick, do you have a picture of the finished product?
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Jan 8, 2013 19:33
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Has anyone else used ABS from Voxel Factory? The price is very good, but the parts that I've printed have a very strong odour. (So far I've used their red ABS and yellow ABS.)
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Jan 8, 2013 23:46
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greenman100 posted:
Keep up the good work on this, progressing rapidly from what it looks like. Hope you get the bearing issue figured out, have you looked at bushings (plastic or brass) instead?
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Jan 9, 2013 05:26
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Fatal posted:Keep up the good work on this, progressing rapidly from what it looks like. Hope you get the bearing issue figured out, have you looked at bushings (plastic or brass) instead? Bushings are probably a decent fit for this application, partly because RPMs are so low. I'm trying to reduce load on the motor though, and bushings will have more motor loading than ball bearings/roller bearings. I used a metal bushing so far, ran about 10 hours on it, no wear, but the motor RPM dropped by about 30%. I think I have a solid solution now, that only adds a few bucks over the original cost. Tough part about all this is I do it in my free time - an hour or two here, wait 3 days for parts, an hour or two there.
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Jan 11, 2013 06:39
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I'm trying to modify some food storage containers. They're made of polypropylene or LDPE, and no glue sticks to them. I'm printing ABS, and am wondering how to get my parts to stick to the containers. What glues stick to PP/LDPE? What glues will stick PP/LDPE to ABS? Am I going to end up printing backplates and using screws to hold everything together then sealing the surfaces?
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Jan 11, 2013 21:47
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I'm not sure about those specific plastics but did you try roughing up the surface with some sandpaper first? That can make a big difference with glue adhesion. Try some 120grit, then maybe some hot melt glue, or epoxy. I hope you're not still planning on putting food in there after gluing it.
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Jan 12, 2013 16:42
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In lighthearted news, I guess we all have this to look forward to in a decade or two: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2851#comic
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Jan 12, 2013 19:29
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DarkHorse posted:In lighthearted news, I guess we all have this to look forward to in a decade or two: One of the early conspiracy theories around factory automation was that the Soviets would remotely reprogram car factories to build tanks overnight while everyone was at home, which hordes of fifth columnists would be waiting to jump into and terrorize the city.
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Jan 12, 2013 19:47
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peepsalot posted:I'm not sure about those specific plastics but did you try roughing up the surface with some sandpaper first? That can make a big difference with glue adhesion. Try some 120grit, then maybe some hot melt glue, or epoxy. There are plenty of food-safe glues, adhesives, and sealants. Roughing the stuff up does not help. I've used a couple of CA glues, vinyl, abs, silicone, polyurethane, rubber cement, and three different epoxies. PE/PP is impervious crap. Now I know why these are always welded. In other news, my y-axis now skips on any travel over 40mm. Super fun times. This is the problem with using steppers instead of servos. babyeatingpsychopath fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 13, 2013 |
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Jan 13, 2013 19:22
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:In other news, my y-axis now skips on any travel over 40mm. Super fun times. This is the problem with using steppers instead of servos. You only really need servos if you're going high speed and high rpms. Neither of which are necessary for 3D printing. Try adjusting the current on your drivers.
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Jan 13, 2013 20:00
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Obsurveyor posted:You only really need servos if you're going high speed and high rpms. Neither of which are necessary for 3D printing. Try adjusting the current on your drivers. Good call. I was putting 1.12 A into a 1A motor and it was overheating. Adjusted back down to 0.6A. Odd that the current adjuster would move, ever, and only on one axis, but whatever.
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Jan 13, 2013 20:11
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I've been looking at building a small CNC mill that I could add an extruder head to for 3d printing. Has anyone tried this? I'm specifically looking at a Shapeoko hardware kit (I've got most of the electronics already), but I'm somewhat concerned that there isn't enough Z-axis travel to print anything very big. The Shapeoko wiki lists this as an option someone in their forums tried, I'm more curious if anyone else has tried this with other CNC mills.
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Jan 13, 2013 22:06
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ProtonStorm posted:I've been looking at building a small CNC mill that I could add an extruder head to for 3d printing. Has anyone tried this? I'm specifically looking at a Shapeoko hardware kit (I've got most of the electronics already), but I'm somewhat concerned that there isn't enough Z-axis travel to print anything very big. The Shapeoko wiki lists this as an option someone in their forums tried, I'm more curious if anyone else has tried this with other CNC mills. Zen Toolworks makes one that would easily support a 3D head. I think they even have a 3D head kit now. I have a 7x12x7 but I was never able to get it to work reliably with EMC2 before I moved on to my ORD bot. I am actually working on building something that will hold one of my spindles so I can do light carving(foam, soft woods) on my ORD bot.
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Jan 13, 2013 22:14
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:There are plenty of food-safe glues, adhesives, and sealants. Quick google search says Loctite brand Plastix, see this forum post: http://old.4hv.org/index.php?board=4;action=display;threadid=2268 in which I think they're talking about this product: http://www.loctiteproducts.com/p/sg_plstc/overview/Loctite-Plastics-Bonding-System.htm
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Jan 13, 2013 23:16
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It looks like the Replicator 2X is up for sale now! With an ~8 week lead time.
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Jan 14, 2013 22:09
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thexerox123 posted:It looks like the Replicator 2X is up for sale now! With an ~8 week lead time. And only for the low price of $2800. 
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Jan 15, 2013 00:03
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