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I've been getting a lot of shifting in layers. However, some of the test prints I've tried, such as a large hexagon, seem to print no problem. I wonder if this is heat related on the components driving the printer? It's hotter than usual in Seattle, and my first couple prints in the morning usually go fine, but later in the day when it gets hotter things seem to mess up. I'm trying a print with slower non-print actions, I'm wondering if my printer is more likely to skip position on fast motions? Also, anyone know if anyone sells rainbow or multicolor filament? I really like how this stuff http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:9850 looks, and if I could just order a roll of pre-rainbowed ABS that would be really cool.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:21
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Chainclaw posted:I've been getting a lot of shifting in layers. I don't know what printer you have but there are a few possible things that could cause artifacts like that. 1) check that the pulleys or whatever is on your stepper motor shafts are not slipping, tighten grub screws etc. Its only happening along one axis, so check that specific motor. 2) your motor current could be too low, causing missed steps on that axis, due to not having enough torque to overcome inertia, also check by hand that the axis is moving freely, and there is no binding or excessive resistance to movement when the motors are powered off. 3) your motor current could be too high and/or improperly cooled. This causes the stepper driver to overheat and temporarily shutting off as a safety mechanism, resulting in missed steps. if you are running pololu or similar drivers you can tweak the pot to adjust the motor current.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:44
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What's a good source for a Mendel kit in the US? Most of the ones I've found seem to be EU-based.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:31
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saint gerald posted:What's a good source for a Mendel kit in the US? Most of the ones I've found seem to be EU-based. MakerFarm has kits available, some people claim they're okay. My one experience with them was negative, as the kit was missing some printed parts. If I didn't have another few printers laying around I would have been angry. I needed the printer literally a day or two after I ordered it, which is why I bought a kit. The parts were printed poorly, so poorly that the instructional videos explain that you need a knife to make the parts fit together, and the kit didn't come with any threaded or smooth rods (As the website says) I sent their support an email and they were pretty responsive, but I probably wouldn't use them again. There are tons of kits available on eBay and Amazon, you'll get a good feel for where to buy from based on eBay feedback.
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Aug 7, 2013 08:23
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Forgive the stupid question.. As part of our annual meeting we are having a name tag contest and I need to know if it possible to print a 4"x3" name tag in 3D that will survive a week long company event? My thought was a flat base with a 3d wind turbine, my name and location
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Aug 7, 2013 12:49
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What are folks using for hollowing out an STL? Normally if I print something, ReplicatorG or MakerWare or CubeX Studio or Objet Studio or any of a million printing tools I've used have a "hollow" option. That's fine for one part, but I have an organic shape that has to be cut in half, then printed in those halves, and I'm having a hell of a time. Imagine a solid sphere - I want to hollow that shape so that the walls are x mm, then cut the model in half and print the halves face down. (Of course it's not a sphere, but you get the idea.) The reason why I can't cut first and then print hollow is because I don't want the bottom wall that that would produce. I want two empty halves that I glue together afterwards. Edit: (Oh, and I can't spend $900 to add the capability to Netfabb, and the instructions that I've found for doing so in MeshLab take on the order of 10 minutes just to attempt it without crashing) Snackmar fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 18:11
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Ropes4u posted:Forgive the stupid question.. Without a sketch to go by, I'm going to say that your design is more fragile than the plastic. poo poo's really strong on an FDM machine. You could probably walk around for a week on 3D printed shoe soles.
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Aug 7, 2013 18:36
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techknight posted:What are folks using for hollowing out an STL? Normally if I print something, ReplicatorG or MakerWare or CubeX Studio or Objet Studio or any of a million printing tools I've used have a "hollow" option. This is a thinking out loud thing, but if you use ReplicatorG and you use the 'move' tools to move around and center the model on the build platform, what happens if you then "sink" the model 1/2 way into the build platform? I don't suppose it would actually ignore the sunken part and properly only print the exposed 1/2, would it? 
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Aug 7, 2013 18:40
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Mister Sinewave posted:This is a thinking out loud thing, but if you use ReplicatorG and you use the 'move' tools to move around and center the model on the build platform, what happens if you then "sink" the model 1/2 way into the build platform? I don't suppose it would actually ignore the sunken part and properly only print the exposed 1/2, would it? Nope, ReplicatorG would drive the nozzle into the printbed. Destroyed a couple of acrylic build platforms on my Cupcake trying something silly a few years ago.
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Aug 7, 2013 18:52
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I think the Shell option in Solidworks will do what you want, but I can't confirm that, and I dunno if you have access to Solidworks. If you just have a closed surface model, Blender might be able to do it as well: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-256-beta/solidify-modifier/
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Aug 7, 2013 19:10
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Lemming posted:I think the Shell option in Solidworks will do what you want, but I can't confirm that, and I dunno if you have access to Solidworks. My experience with Solidworks (I have some access to it through work) has been that it can't do anything to STL files, but I'll definitely try out that Blender option - thanks!
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Aug 7, 2013 19:16
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UberVexer posted:MakerFarm has kits available, some people claim they're okay. I'm not in much of a hurry, and to be honest the more assembly I have to do the more I'll enjoy the process. Is it feasible/economical to source the pieces individually? I see lots of people selling the plastics, but not so many selling motors and so on. The kits on Makerfarm look decent, I guess. quote:There are tons of kits available on eBay and Amazon, you'll get a good feel for where to buy from based on eBay feedback. See, I was expecting that to be the case too, but I couldn't find much of anything on either, short of an i2 kit (sans plastics) on eBay. Maybe I am searching for the wrong things?
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Aug 7, 2013 19:34
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Has anyone tried to produce any of the polyhedral gaming dice available for print? If so were they decent quality?
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Aug 7, 2013 21:03
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saint gerald posted:I'm not in much of a hurry, and to be honest the more assembly I have to do the more I'll enjoy the process. Is it feasible/economical to source the pieces individually? I see lots of people selling the plastics, but not so many selling motors and so on. The kits on Makerfarm look decent, I guess. I got my motors, plastics, controllers, and electronics from four different ebay sources, and a run to Home Depot for all my misc hardware. Came out to about 85% of one of the kits.
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Aug 7, 2013 21:30
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techknight posted:What are folks using for hollowing out an STL? Normally if I print something, ReplicatorG or MakerWare or CubeX Studio or Objet Studio or any of a million printing tools I've used have a "hollow" option. Check out MeshLab, I haven't used it to do this but I'd bet a cup of a coffee that it can do what you need.
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Aug 7, 2013 21:51
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:I got my motors, plastics, controllers, and electronics from four different ebay sources, and a run to Home Depot for all my misc hardware. Came out to about 85% of one of the kits. Is there a detailed bill of materials or something like that somewhere?
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Aug 7, 2013 22:07
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kafkasgoldfish posted:Check out MeshLab, I haven't used it to do this but I'd bet a cup of a coffee that it can do what you need. You might've missed my edit - MeshLab takes over ten minutes on an i7-920 to attempt it. (And sometimes crashes, or fails without an error message.) I've got it working in Blender now, using the Solidify modifer. There's very little in the way of practical examples, causing my first attempts on a basic primitive to produce horrifying results like this:  However, with these settings I get the right sort of thing:  
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Aug 7, 2013 22:26
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Cant you just print with 0% infill and no floor layers?
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Aug 7, 2013 23:16
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Unzip and Attack posted:Has anyone tried to produce any of the polyhedral gaming dice available for print? If so were they decent quality? Ehhh, I wouldn't try to produce dice for anything but show. The printing process results in a die that is going to be very directionally dependent, so the result of a roll is never going to be perfectly random.
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Aug 7, 2013 23:24
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insta posted:Without a sketch to go by, I'm going to say that your design is more fragile than the plastic. poo poo's really strong on an FDM machine. You could probably walk around for a week on 3D printed shoe soles. Last question.. Anyone interested in helping a goon out or telling me who could help me?
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Aug 8, 2013 00:20
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Spazzle posted:Cant you just print with 0% infill and no floor layers? No, I need the models to be correct before slicing. I will keep that in mind for my own stuff in the future - someone on the Toronto 3D Printers forum suggested how to do that in slic3r. On this particular project though, the client has CubeX printers that offer only a limited set of options in the slicing stage. I've done some more tests and the Blender solidify option is definitely the way I'll do things for now.
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Aug 8, 2013 00:37
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Mister Sinewave posted:This is a thinking out loud thing, but if you use ReplicatorG and you use the 'move' tools to move around and center the model on the build platform, what happens if you then "sink" the model 1/2 way into the build platform?
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Aug 8, 2013 04:09
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techknight posted:My experience with Solidworks (I have some access to it through work) has been that it can't do anything to STL files, but I'll definitely try out that Blender option - thanks! Open SCAD will let you import an STL file and then create geometry inside of it, if you take the difference of the intersection of the two then you've got a hollow object with whatever internal geometry you want.
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Aug 8, 2013 10:33
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saint gerald posted:Is there a detailed bill of materials or something like that somewhere? http://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel_assembly_data_sheet If it's reasonably open-source, there will be a bill of materials somewhere. Mendels basically break down to 1) plastic 2) electronics 2a) stepper controllers [may be included with 2)] 3) Stepper motors 4) hardware store stuff 5) belts/build platform/bearings/bushings/specialized stuff you'll need one of, once.
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Aug 8, 2013 12:59
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UberVexer posted:Open SCAD will let you import an STL file and then create geometry inside of it, if you take the difference of the intersection of the two then you've got a hollow object with whatever internal geometry you want. True - I've done that in the past for primitives, but in this case I need a specific internal geometry - which is to say a smaller version of the original mesh with a consistent thickness. That's just not possible with scale() or resize() on a complex organic shape. I ended up with a new problem though! So I've got my shelled object, which I then cut in half to print: (using a cube as an example)  Naturally the red area is an unclosed hole from the cut, but the quick mesh repair tools that I've tried cover the entire bottom instead of bridging the gap:  I guess I could take the halves back into Blender and manually fix it if I have to, or see if Blender's knife tool can do the job quickly.. But there will be a lot of models for the project in the end, so I need to figure out the quickest, simplest workflow.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:28
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techknight posted:True - I've done that in the past for primitives, but in this case I need a specific internal geometry - which is to say a smaller version of the original mesh with a consistent thickness. That's just not possible with scale() or resize() on a complex organic shape. Looks like you cut it up in netfabb? Maybe try http://cloud.netfabb.com to repair instead of using the quick mesh repair tools in the app? Unrelated Edit: I did a bad thing. Shh, don't tell. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45699157/fuel3d-a-handheld-3d-scanner-for-less-than-1000 kafkasgoldfish fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 16:39
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kafkasgoldfish posted:Looks like you cut it up in netfabb? Maybe try http://cloud.netfabb.com to repair instead of using the quick mesh repair tools in the app? The cloud version produces the same result, unfortunately. (Even if it had worked it wouldn't be practical though, I'm going to have hundreds of 20 MB meshes to deal with.) Did you back the Fuel 3D or are you one of the creators? (If you're Kevin, are you still bringing the beta camera to Site 3 tonight?)
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Aug 8, 2013 16:56
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techknight posted:True - I've done that in the past for primitives, but in this case I need a specific internal geometry - which is to say a smaller version of the original mesh with a consistent thickness. That's just not possible with scale() or resize() on a complex organic shape. Is it possible this is the result of the face normals not pointing in the right direction? I don't have a ton of experience with Blender, but you should be able to google around for some instructions on how to check it out. It's possible that the repair is all janky because it can't tell what's supposed to be the outside and what's supposed to be the inside, but if the normals for the outer shell are facing out and the normals for the inside shell are facing in, from what I understand the repair should be working.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:15
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Check the facenormals on the inner half. In most 3D packages they would need to point inwards for the 'fix hole' tool to work.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:27
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Hmm.. I think the triangles are oriented correctly to start with, but I tried flipping the inner ones and doing a hole repair in Netfabb, got the same result as unflipped. 
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Aug 8, 2013 17:57
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techknight posted:Did you back the Fuel 3D or are you one of the creators? (If you're Kevin, are you still bringing the beta camera to Site 3 tonight?) I just backed it. 
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Aug 8, 2013 18:00
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kafkasgoldfish posted:I just backed it. Oh oh oh, sorry - one of Fuel 3D guys is supposed to be bringing the demo unit to our makerspace tonight. I thought you were recognizing my username and posting that.
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Aug 8, 2013 18:31
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techknight posted:Hmm.. I think the triangles are oriented correctly to start with, but I tried flipping the inner ones and doing a hole repair in Netfabb, got the same result as unflipped. I tried doing basically what you're doing, and there didn't seem to be any clean, cheap, or easy solution. I was even trying to solve a simpler problem, and got the same results. Basically, I wanted to take an arbitrary spline and extrude it vertically. When the spline got somewhat complicated and/or its feature size started to approach the extrude thickness, the bottom got terrible. Blender couldn't fix it, meshlab just identified that it was all jacked up, etc. If you do figure this out, make sure you post how you did it; my project is still stalled in the incredibly tedious hand-fixing of thousand-vertex bottom spline stage.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:09
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peepsalot posted:I don't know what printer you have but there are a few possible things that could cause artifacts like that. The motor seemed to move smoothly, and when I would watch it when it was skipping, it didn't look or sound like anything was wrong with the motors. I put a fan behind the printer pointed at the electronics, and I've printed for several hours today now with no offset layers.
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Aug 12, 2013 04:29
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Fun new issue, every few Z layers looks different, and the prints are pretty brittle at these points. Not sure how to search this problem on google yet, I'll have to look at some 3D printer FAQs to get an idea on how to describe it.
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Aug 13, 2013 06:53
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Chainclaw posted:Fun new issue, every few Z layers looks different, and the prints are pretty brittle at these points. Hah, those actually look kind of neat. You'll want to look up Z-wobble. Like does the nozzle appear to straying during a print? Which printer are you using?
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Aug 13, 2013 07:15
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Mmmm, crinkle cut rabbits. Looks like the rate at which the nozzle is being lifted isnt regular somehow.
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Aug 13, 2013 07:18
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Thanks for the tips. I found some pages on the Solidoodle wiki I will read through tomorrow on this issue: http://www.soliwiki.com/Banding http://www.soliwiki.com/Calibration_of_the_Z_wobble
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Aug 13, 2013 07:32
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I would hazard a guess that your hot end hysteresis is too wide. Ie its getting HOT then cooling then TOO COLD then heating repeat repeat etc.
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Aug 15, 2013 08:34
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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. I would mostly just be printing little knickknacks, and maybe some misc. plastic camera accessories for my photography (maybe lens caps, viewfinder hoods, etc) depending on how much of 3D modelling I could learn. Is there a more up-to-date list of current printers somewhere? I probably wouldn't be buying one for another few months, but I'd like to start doing some research. Currently the Solidoodle seems like a decent option for a fully assembled printer around ~$500-600, but if anyone has any other suggestions I'm wide open. I did back 3Doodler though 
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Aug 26, 2013 18:40
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