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Kazy posted:So how does one get into 3D printing? The OP doesn't seem to have been updated in a year and I was wondering if it was still current. Solidoodle and Printrbot are both inexpensive starter printers. MAKE magazine did a great run-down last year of all the (then) current 3D printers here that would still be relevant for getting into 3D printing in general: http://makezine.com/volume/make-ultimate-guide-to-3d-printing/ They've announced that they're working on a new version for 2013 that will be available closer to the end of the year. Edit: Also, I finished my new 3D printed wood sculpture today if anyone wants to see it: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:140109
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Aug 26, 2013 21:36
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Kazy posted:So how does one get into 3D printing? The OP doesn't seem to have been updated in a year and I was wondering if it was still current. This kickstarter is ending soon. I haven't backed it, but $650 for a full kit seems like a pretty decent deal: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blueeaglelabs/kossel-clear-lets-build-a-full-sized-delta-3d-prin I'm still in the process of piecing together my own delta printer since melting my prusa 2.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:46
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Kazy posted:So how does one get into 3D printing? The OP doesn't seem to have been updated in a year and I was wondering if it was still current. If you want to get into it, buy an assembled printer or at the very minimum a kit with good support. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this play out:  I want to get into 3d printers Cool, you can buy one for a grand! Can I save money? I've heard you can build them for $300 You can probably do that if you try really hard and have lots of luck[time passes] My cheap printer doesn't work and ended up costing me $500, 3d printing isn't ready for mainstream at all 
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Aug 26, 2013 22:11
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peepsalot posted:Something about the delta printer just seems like a really elegant design to me, and there have been a lot of new variations coming out lately with really quality results. Yeah, I've been eyeing a variety of options since my wife gave me the green light to get one and the various delta printers looks currently to be the best option.
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Aug 26, 2013 22:16
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Ok from doing a bit of research today, I'm looking at either the Printrbot jr v2, or the Solidoodle 2 Expert, both at ~$700. The only thing that worries me about the Solidoodle is Chainclaw's problems with it in this thread  And on the other hand, the Printrbot is so recent there don't even seem to be any reviews
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Aug 27, 2013 02:16
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Kazy posted:Ok from doing a bit of research today, I'm looking at either the Printrbot jr v2, or the Solidoodle 2 Expert, both at ~$700. You don't want the expert, the case is a PITA. Use 4 acrylic panels and some magnets.
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Aug 27, 2013 04:48
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insta posted:If you want to get into it, buy an assembled printer or at the very minimum a kit with good support. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this play out: This is why I didn't buy a Sumpod Delta in the end. Sure it's cheap but there's no good word of mouth. Just people mouthing off that Sumpod's a small operation with communication problems who take ages to actually ship. Plus the whole bank transfer for payment route is kinda risky. It could be an amazing bargain but it seems like it's too good to be true with a thick coating of warning signs. Think I'll wait a few months until a few more Delta variants come out, something around £450/$700 including taxes and UK shipping.
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Aug 27, 2013 08:25
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All else the same (i.e. company reliability, fitness of design variant, etc.) is a delta-style or a rectangular gantry style considered to be "better?" Better in this case meaning accuracy, I suppose. Time is free when you're sleeping. I realize that's an exceedingly nebulous question, but I'm trying to determine if I should aim for one style or another at a particular price point when my goal is really accuracy/level of detail.
Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 14:27
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That's a really difficult question to answer. Delta robots have a higher resolution on most of the build platform - it varies. The benefit of a delta bot for me was a tall build envelope, small footprint in relation to the built platform and simple design. The downsides to a delta, IMO, is calibration and software/firmware, most of it is geared towards cartesian bots and this makes set up a bit of a bitch, it's getting better though. Also if your frame isn't reasonably precise and trued you can end up with skewed prints (a square may come out, well, less than square).
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Aug 28, 2013 10:27
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Kazy posted:Ok from doing a bit of research today, I'm looking at either the Printrbot jr v2, or the Solidoodle 2 Expert, both at ~$700. I think any printer under $1000 is going to need some user maintenance. Here are all the problems I've had so far, and how I've fixed each: Bad power supply : Had the company send me a new power supply. Clogged hot end : Ordered a new hot end. This is more user error than anything else, but it's still unfortunate that I could get into that situation. Plastic curls up off base during print : Went to the hardware store and bought an 8" x 8" piece of glass. I spray hairspray on it before prints, and it works much better. Nozzle gets clogged during print / does not smoothly extrude : I turned down the speed my printer prints at, and that seemed to fix it. Layer shifting : I put a fan behind my printer and it doesn't shift anymore. Layer banding ( http://www.soliwiki.com/Banding ) : I have not solved yet. It seems to be happening from the build platform wobbling a bit as it goes up and down.
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Aug 29, 2013 02:50
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Ars just did a pretty entertaining / informative article. It had info on the Printrbot
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Aug 29, 2013 02:55
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Chainclaw posted:I think any printer under $1000 is going to need some user maintenance. Yeah, I think I'll deal. I'll get the $600 model and make my own enclosure. As for banding, I've been reading up a lot about the Solidoodle, and I'm not sure if this applies to your problem, but have you tried this mod? Uses a 3d printed part to keep tension on the Z-axis thing to reduce banding. There are a few other similar fixes if you google "Anti-backlash solidoodle"
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Aug 29, 2013 02:57
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peepsalot posted:Something about the delta printer just seems like a really elegant design to me, and there have been a lot of new variations coming out lately with really quality results. I sort of want to get in on this, but I'm wary of doing so without any sort of promise of fitness. 3D printers are plenty finicky as-is, throwing an untested kickstarter into the mix makes me nervous. Only 13 hours left to decide.
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Aug 29, 2013 03:30
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Kazy posted:Yeah, I think I'll deal. I'll get the $600 model and make my own enclosure. Yeah, I wanted to try some of those out, but I haven't had the time in the last few weeks (or next few), my weekends have all gotten full.
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Aug 29, 2013 05:29
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We got a uPrint Plus at work last week, so that we'd have an FDM alternative to the Objet 500. We've only done a few jobs on it so far, but man it is nice to use an FDM printer where everything just works. And it has a support material that actually functions correctly!  The downside is of course having to buy materials (and single-use print trays  ) made only by Stratasys, but overall I'm pretty impressed. Apparently the material used to cost a lot more before - maybe plentiful hobbyist gear influenced that a bit?
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Aug 29, 2013 20:59
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Hmm, another option I'm looking at is the Flashforge Creator, which seems to be a clone of the dual-extruder Replicator. $1200 is about double what I'd pay for the Solidoodle, but it seems like the Creator has decent support and the reviews on Amazon are pretty good, which is better than pretty much any other 3D printer that's on Amazon Maybe I should just buy that 3D printer guidebook posted earlier  Seems like there are a lot of variables to consider when buying a 3D printer. Especially this: If I'm considering a $1200 printer, are there any others in that price range that have good reviews/support community?
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Aug 29, 2013 22:13
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Two different groups have just started taking preorders for 3D printers which double as milling machines: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/327919589/the-microfactory-a-machine-shop-in-a-box?ref=live http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fabtotum-personal-fabricator How likely do you suppose it is that machines like these would live up to expectations? With milling, there's a major limit to what you can do when you have an RC car motor for a spindle and not much more rigidity than the average 3D printer.
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Aug 30, 2013 04:00
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There's no reason it can't work; an FDM 3D printer and a CNC mill are the same exact machine but with different heads installed and different ideas of how sturdy they should be. Any of the metal 3D printers (mendelmaxes and the like) should be capable of milling soft materials with little or no alterations beyond swapping the extruder for a dremel. You'll have to go slowly, you won't be able to tae more than maybe .05-.1 in a single pass, and you won't be able to work in anything harder than aluminum (I'd guess the most common materials will be softwood or machining wax) but it's certainly possible. I'd be most worried about all the dust and junk that machining produces loving up any 3D prints. I have to clean my printer's bed with windex every time I send a new part if I want the pieces to stick, and that's in a clean desktop environment. You really don't want to be constantly getting sawdust all over everything.
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Aug 30, 2013 04:36
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The very earliest reprap designs and were also made with an eye for combination milling and printing. The Darwin has much more crossbracing than any pure printer would ever need. Not that it helped as the darwin, even with it's crossbracing, was not stiff enough for good milling. The mendel has very little crossbracing. The simple reason is that the qualities that make one machine good don't really make the other. Subtractive manufacturing has strict tooling speed limits. Additive manufacturing doesn't. Subtractive manufacturing needs lots of stiffness, not just of frame, but of tooling. Additive manufacturing needs a barely stiff frame, and has almost no tool loading. These have implications for how you'd move the tool around. Since you barely care about speed for subtractive, but need stiffness, the typical solution is screw drive. Early experiments with 3d printers with screw drives, many of which were little more than adaptations of a desktop milling machine with a 3d printer head, gave printers that were both workable, and horrifically slow. Which is why almost all printers use belt drives. Which are in turn basically unsuitable for milling. Now, there are screw profiles out there that don't sacrifice speed. They're also much more expensive, and they require beefier motors, as they do trade off motor stress for that speed. For the $3000+ microfactory, there's room in the budget to do it right. For the other one, at less than 1/3 the price, who knows. At the same time, the question of just what are your expectations for a $1000 combination machine.
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Aug 30, 2013 05:32
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Aurium posted:The very earliest reprap designs and were also made with an eye for combination milling and printing. The Darwin has much more crossbracing than any pure printer would ever need. Not that it helped as the darwin, even with it's crossbracing, was not stiff enough for good milling. I could potentially see one getting noteworthy results using ballscrews driven by servos (which would be crazy overpowered for a single-purpose machine). But then, even a $3000 price point would be a challenge.
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Aug 30, 2013 17:28
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I think I've decided on the Flashforge Creator (the Replicator 1 clone). I was wary on spending over $1k+ on a 3D printer, but then I thought of it from my perspective as a photographer My camera's body alone cost more, so why not? Anyway, before buying it, I'm messing around in various 3D programs, and I have two questions: 1. What's the process of segmenting an STL file to make separate parts to glue together later? 2. Is there anything besides SketchUp that can import a DXF file while also being able to (whether via plugin or natively) export a STL file? I'm trying to export models from a game, using an obscure 3rd party program that only exports to MQO. Right now I've gotten MQO > Metasequoia to save it in DXF > Sketchup (trial) > TinkerCAD (ReplicatorG doesn't seem to like the STLs straight from Sketchup) > ReplicatorG. It's kind of a process and I'd keep using it, but I'm also using the option in Metasequoia to smooth the model, which makes it much higher poly and SketchUp doesn't seem to like those. Metasequoia also exports in SUF, COB, X, SCE, RDS, & POV files so if anything can read those it would work too.
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Aug 31, 2013 23:39
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Kazy posted:2. Is there anything besides SketchUp that can import a DXF file while also being able to (whether via plugin or natively) export a STL file?
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Sep 1, 2013 04:35
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My friends and I jumped into 3D printing a few months back with the Rostock Max. We're loving it so far, but there have been a ton of issues that we've had to fix. We put in an aluminum plate on the heated bed and we've now got two power supplies running in parallel to give the bed enough juice to hit 110°C. There are still issues with print quality, especially small prints with thin walls. The calibration cube print is looking pretty good though. We're going to print/buy the parts for Xnaron's magnetic u-joints (http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=1704&p=10703#p10703) to try to fix some delta arm blues. I think our extruder either needs to be upgraded or replaced. It looks like we got stuck with an older extruder from SeeMeCNC instead of the newer EZstruder.
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Sep 1, 2013 22:51
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I made a thing. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:145640 It was a prop for my Dragon*con costume. It turns out natural PLA is an awesome LED light defuser.
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Sep 3, 2013 20:56
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Welp, I'm impatient  (Shipping time seems like a long time, but according to Amazon reviews the estimate is super conservative) Was going to a Solidoodle, but a good 75% of the posts and videos online I saw about it were more about issues with it than actual printing. Plus it's dual extrusion  e: Also, tried to scan my head with ReconstructMe and my 360's Kinect, but the results weren't that clean. Any tips for getting a cleaner scan, or advice on cleaning one up? Plus, the demo version adds random spheres and a couple went straight through my head.  I'd try Volumental, but it's not working for me. I think something went wrong installing the software for it.
Kazy fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 14:41
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Kazy posted:Was going to a Solidoodle, but a good 75% of the posts and videos online I saw about it were more about issues with it than actual printing. Plus it's dual extrusion I got a Solidoodle 2 in June to add to my wall of machines, and it's one of the machines I'm least impressed with. It's got a horrible Z wobble, causing banding in the prints. The parts are just not engineered well, and they won't give you the source files to fix them, if that's your cup of tea.
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Sep 7, 2013 20:03
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So, I am likely buying a new house. The roof shingles looks like they have about 5 years left on it before it needs a full replacement. Perpetual roofs of any design radically increase a homes value (Metal, terracotta, rubber slab, etc) Fancy perpetual roofs which are modular (in case of hail or whatnaught) increase it even more. I have a new 3d printer arriving in February of this year capable of doing 15x10 (cm) prints (tiny I know). Any ideas for design/colour schemes for the ABS tiles I'll be printing for the next 5 years until its time to replace the roof shingles? (Making them look like terracotta tiles seems a bit too obvious, but I can't think of anything else).
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Sep 13, 2013 06:53
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Print yourself up a snakeskin roof 
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Sep 13, 2013 07:18
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Nill posted:Print yourself up a snakeskin roof Do a chrome effect snakeskin roof with celtic knot border design. Or pixel art if the blue>white>brown doesn't fit right.
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Sep 13, 2013 09:02
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Since a significant portion of this thread involves 3D modeling, I think this video may be of interest. It's a way to create a simplified model out of a single 2D image and adjust its properties. Really needs to be seen in action to get the full effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oie1ZXWceqM I don't think you can extract the model or anything yet, and it only supports cylindrical and rectangular cross-sections so far, but it looks really neat.
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Sep 13, 2013 11:53
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Kazy posted:Welp, I'm impatient
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Sep 14, 2013 22:48
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Dave Jones of EEVBlog just posted a interviewing some guy that designed a really big reprap made from square aluminum tube and features dual independent extruders. First time I've seen that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlfU1gvwBRM
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Sep 16, 2013 22:40
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Holy poo poo everything about that is genius.
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Sep 16, 2013 23:07
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Interesting developments in delta bot land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnp1Pmki3lI&t=14s Purely tension based, no pushrods. http://designmakeshare.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/introducing-skydelta/
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Sep 17, 2013 04:48
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I feel like that'd lead to a lot of bounce unless the tension were super high and the cables used had an abnormal tensile strength with basically no stretch whatsoever. e: Eesh, he's using rubber bands (planned to be springs)? I can't imagine this holding a very tight tolerance.
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Sep 17, 2013 05:07
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peepsalot posted:Dave Jones of EEVBlog just posted a interviewing some guy that designed a really big reprap made from square aluminum tube and features dual independent extruders. First time I've seen that. 18 minutes and what I hear is "I've had 3d printers before, and this fixes all the issues I've had. Some in hardware, some in software. It also adds useful features that nobody else has thought of. And I made it out of less expensive and more easily available parts." It is completely brilliant.
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Sep 18, 2013 00:47
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For at least another few hours, a new type of 3d printer is available on Kickstarter. It costs only $117 shipped. It seems pretty cool, but could probably use time to work out some kinks. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc fake edit: Same project on indiegogo. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-scanner
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Sep 23, 2013 17:56
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Anuvin posted:For at least another few hours, a new type of 3d printer is available on Kickstarter. It costs only $117 shipped. It seems pretty cool, but could probably use time to work out some kinks. I looked at that one this weekend. Clever, but very few actual printed samples to look at.
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Sep 23, 2013 18:39
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UberVexer posted:When you start using this printer, tell me how it works. I'm half interested in it. I have no prior experience with 3D printing, but it actually works pretty well! For stuff with rafts/supports, I prefer Makerware since its peel-away rafts are really great. The dualstrusion is okay, I still need to work out retraction or whatever it's called. Right now I'm getting the oozing strings of plastic from the non-active extruder sticking out the side of the build. You can see it in the blue bits on the sides of this build:  e: My kapton tape is already ripping (I think I need to get a better spatula to peel prints off, my metal one is cutting the tape when I try). Is Amazon the best source of tape? Also, where can I get something better to peel the prints off that won't cut the tape?
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Sep 23, 2013 20:45
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Kazy posted:e: My kapton tape is already ripping (I think I need to get a better spatula to peel prints off, my metal one is cutting the tape when I try). Is Amazon the best source of tape? Also, where can I get something better to peel the prints off that won't cut the tape? Garnier Fructis Extreme Control - sprayed a 2 second layer of this over the glass while it was cool and don't have a problem with things not sticking. I don't wash it off very often so I think the one can will last at least a year. Quicker to apply + Doesn't rip + Laziness = Right up my alley. They sell it at my grocery store too. Same price.
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Sep 23, 2013 21:15
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