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I had tried it (that was me) but that was before I had a heated build platform. I ditched it when the HBP seemed to solve all those problems. Turns out that there's still a problem - even with the HBP - when it comes to tall models so I'll likely wind up hauling out that very same hair dryer again after all.
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Sep 24, 2011 19:19
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techknight posted:Well, ReplicatorG actually does this if you turn on "exterior support" during skeining, I upgraded to the latest ReplicatorG (which I avoid because I have to re-tweak all the customizing I did in the last one and am not determined enough to figure out how to make my settings portable) to try this feature out! But either it or me doesn't work the way the other thinks it should. I wanted this:  And what I got is this:  loving 
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Sep 25, 2011 23:59
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Interior Support is the next plan, I can see how skeinforge could consider that to be internal rather than external I guess. Though if I decide I don't want to roll the dice on another hour+ during next playtime I'll probably just print it laying down sideways or something. Also, sadly despite blowing hot air into the build area and insulating it with foam (so it remained nice and toasty - but not HOT - inside) my last tests STILL show signs of lifting and curling (and therefore distortion and added stress on the print nozzle) during tall prints. I'm out of ideas so I guess I'll just shrug my shoulders on that one for now.
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Sep 26, 2011 19:41
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Couple days old but here's a link to an  exclusive interview with Bre Pettis from Makerbot regarding Makerbot and the 10M investment.http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/10/makes-exclusive-interview-with-bre-pettis-of-makerbot-life-10m-in-funding-and-beyond.html Some interesting reading in there. Especially about the patent stuff. On one hand they're an Open Source Open Hardware company. On the other hand you might have to get "defensive patents" but being open source/hardware you want to allow people to build and expand on your stuff. How do those two mesh? Who the gently caress knows? Patents do exist in 3D printing land and they have gotten letters from patent holders saying "we're watching your every move"  I'm interested in seeing where this winds up in 3 or 5 years.
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Oct 8, 2011 13:11
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Oh, and it didn't even occur to me to crosspost this in here from TFR: A while ago I had posted about the 3D designs for an AR magazine that a guy made. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11636 Well, I eventually printed my own version to see how it would go. I think it will hold and feed one round!    There is a "thing". This is all that will fit.  Why? Well, look at the tip of the cartridge in the next photo. It's too long for the magazine.  Apparently the shrinkage of ABS wasn't accounted for (that's my best guess) so the cartridges don't actually fit. Another 1mm+ would probably have done the trick. I could print it again scaling up by 2.5-3.0% to offset ABS shrinkage but babysitting new prints for a few more hours on a "hey this is neat, let's try it out" thing is  I bore easily, I guess.
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Oct 8, 2011 13:19
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Aurium posted:As a general rule, ABS generally shrinks by 4%. PLA doesn't really shrink at all. 4%? Really? My empirical tests led me to think it was more 2.5% or maybe 3%. For example, I made a cap to fit on a 43mm OD pipe (so cap was 43mm ID). Printing it at scale 1.00 resulted in a a cap that was too tight. Upping to 1.02 was really snug but could be forced on. 1.025 seemed just right (kept snug by friction fit but still could be easily pushed on or pulled off.) I couldn't really get a great measurement of the actual ID of the cap since a circle isn't really circular and is actually made up of 32 sides or so, so I just kind of ran with the 2.5% number. It's really 4%?
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Oct 9, 2011 04:02
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That looks awesome. What's with the NetFabb software they talk about? Some of those prints shown at Ultimaker are really small and still nice. My printer SUCKS at small objects. My Makerbot "Resolution of 0.4mm" loving I think they left out the word "theoretical" in there somewhere. 
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Oct 15, 2011 03:13
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Printing a medium sized object (or even a small one) can take like an hour or more from start to finish. It's an automatic tool, but it's still a hands-on process with a pre- and post-print, it's not like a normal printer or photocopier or anything.  I had a guy hit me up to print him some reprap parts. I'm game, but honestly what you're asking for is also several hours of my time to startup/shutdown and babysit the process even if you have ready-to-print 3D model files. It's not like "Oh yeah I'll just add it on to the other stuff I'm cranking out no sweat."
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Oct 16, 2011 02:51
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I think the ABP is just ahead of its time. But that's probably just me, because I only really do one-offs. Out of all the things I wish my printer did better and could upgrade, an ABP is honestly not even on the list. Still, it's a cool feature, and surely if I was cranking out piles of identical badges or something a proper one might be worth its weight in gold. Speaking of features, the Makerbot's the ONLY printer with an ABP feature for batch printing. But amusingly, it's also the ONLY printer without an integrated spool feed management feature (you know, to make feeding filament and therefore unassisted printing more reliable?)
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Oct 20, 2011 00:15
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 loving hell, I have something to print and for some reason my machine has just decided to up and stop extruding anywhere from 30s to 5mins into a print. Spent all morning dicking around with this bastard, resets and reboots and re-priming extruder all to no avail. What's wrong? Who knows? Oh, unreliable tools
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Oct 21, 2011 19:42
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I got it sorted out, just grumpy. The filament would get stripped by the extruder motor gear for god knows what reason. It stopped when I removed the New Thing I Added (a hairdryer I was using to keep the build area warm in an effort to combat the ancient enemy of uneven model shrinkage). Best guess is that the added warmth from that was just enough to cause the filament to be soft enough for the extruder gear to strip it instead of pushing it down like it should, but who knows. I removed the extra heating thing and late last night was able to print a tall, thin-walled object without repeating the problem. Instead the print as usual distorted due to uneven shrinkage just like god intended, and managed to pop itself off the build platform when it was 95% done just in case I thought my time wasn't being completely wasted.
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Oct 22, 2011 18:56
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Why isn't there a "dammit, just do what I want" button? Closest I get to that is using Google Sketchup then exporting to .STL (via a plugin). I don't use OpenSCAD or 3DSMax or anything because I refuse to learn new things. Also I never got past step 3 or whatever of the Blender tutorial because I'm not loving autistic.
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Oct 24, 2011 05:19
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I've decided to try moving to PLA with my Makerbot (it's a Cupcake with HBP). Any tips or gotchas? My plan is precisely to simply ensure the HBP is disabled, then try a run with a PLA profile in ReplicatorG/Skeinforge. Probably my biggest fear is loving up my print head somehow, I have heard that PLA is or can be a lot harder on the print head than ABS.
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Nov 8, 2011 22:20
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Is the idea that with so many holes (and so much surface area) the cooling is evened out and it all therefore shrinks evenly? (I can't actually make out what he says in the video, my ears don't work.)
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Nov 15, 2011 16:54
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Ah, that makes sense. That's a clever idea.
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Nov 15, 2011 19:35
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"set your skeinforge settings to 0.7, and print!" has got to be the most retardedly awesome example of simultaneously detailed yet utterly meaningless instruction.
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Nov 28, 2011 17:28
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^^^^^ I'm not aware of any that accept public investors, so  kafkasgoldfish posted:So the big news is they made an Ultimaker?  Though honestly it looks great, I'd consider forking out for one to replace my current unit. My big thing is wanting to minimize the "fiddling" overhead that goes with 3D printing; both for the print process itself, as well as the hardware and software. No way to really know how well it hits those bases yet, though.
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Jan 10, 2012 01:09
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I often print parts that go into some real-world thing so exact measurements are important. Can't remember the last time I cared about the finished texture looking layered. But then again I don't make jewelery or anything. ABS shrinks but it does so predictably - scaling up the model by 2.5% seems to do the trick for me. My biggest problem is ABS cooling irregularly and curling/lifting especially at the edges. My printer was nigh-unusable except with tiny objects until I got a heated build platform. It's not fixed by any means, just somewhat less of a problem now. I can now print SMALL objects, not just tiny ones. 
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Jan 11, 2012 00:20
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With a dual-extruder head, how exactly does one define which piece of the model gets which extrusion head? I mean, say one head is blue and one is black. I used sketchup -> stl export. What would I do when modeling to mark "this section is blue/black"? (Or for example how you would tell it to print the support material with the water-soluble head and the model with the ABS head for that matter) I'm not at all clear on how the printer "knows". The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jan 12, 2012 |
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Jan 12, 2012 22:26
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Huh, nice and simple I guess - what you see is what you get.
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Jan 13, 2012 16:22
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Just used Shapeways for the first time. Looks like I'll have to wait 3 weeks to get my order (ships end of Jan, +1 more to get here) but the price was fine and it was easy enough of a process. I'd have kicked more $$ to speed it up somehow, but didn't see any option to do so. If I were headed straight to Shapeways as square one it would be a hell of a learning curve, but it was easy since I'm used to designing for printing on my Makerbot. It was just a matter of sending to Shapeways and picking a material instead of sending to my printer. 3 weeks from now we'll see if I eat my words I guess. P.S. I didn't know this, but Shapeways has a whole integrated "store" of other people's models that you can just BUY from, complete with gift wrapping. There really are some neat things there.
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Jan 18, 2012 21:05
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techknight posted:Ponoko has something like that called Prime. It's not for one-offs, but more of an optional monthly membership like Amazon Prime to get your stuff made faster, shipped cheaper, etc: http://www.ponoko.com/make-and-sell/pricing-and-signup Thanks for the heads up; I'll look into it. I normally do boring work-related ones and twos of things, just trying out sending stuff out to a fab house for stuff that's beyond my Makerbot's ability.
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Jan 18, 2012 22:31
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I just tried ordering a sample part to see how it goes from Ponoko USA. Very different experiences. From the perspective of sending them a design I made to fab one from a fairly rigid plastic and mail to me: Shapeways has a much more streamlined experience to it all, also some really nice touches like integrating what materials are available and details about their properties (strength, bendy/rigid, etc) so it's super easy to pick one. Also both fab houses seem to have the "We both fab for you, as well as act as a 'shop' for you to provide your designs and people buy fabbed versions". Shapeways was much more streamlined and intuitive to me. Ponoko's interface and process seemed clunky by comparison. There were a few points during which I was actually pretty . Like after I uploaded my .stl and picked a material (which was clunky - I'm assumed to know them all beforehand and they have very generic names and no prices in the name and no "?" button), then I get to "Add Resources" and "Add Tools(?)" I had no idea what it was talking about, then I realized it's asking me stuff that only makes sense if I'm making a kit to sell online or something. It was all things like that - stuff that makes total sense to someone who has grasped the whole concept beforehand but triggers some serious  otherwise. Maybe I just plain went into Ponoko with pre-formed expectations; I always thought it was primarily a 2D and 3D fab house but maybe that led me astray. Some other differences: Ponoko was more expensive, twice the cost shipping, no idea how it will ship (it didn't say) or ETA for fabbing or delivery. Not saying Ponoko doesn't have that info somewhere, just it was not part of the upload->configure->order->payment workflow. e: Also, the rendered views of your design at Shapeways are pretty sweet; I felt really confident I had sent them exactly what I wanted and it helped me feel really good and confident about hitting "CONFIRM". Ponoko gives a little thumbnail rendering which I was unable to zoom on or anything, and is not really useful for anything other than a basic visual confirmation. ee: Found the shipping FAQ from Ponoko. 1-2 weeks to fab, probably 1 week for shipping? So seems basically the same as Shapeways. Ponoko prime cuts the fab time in half but as the cupcake-craving robot says, it's not really intended for one-offs. Neither Shapeways nor Ponoko has an expedite/rush option. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jan 19, 2012 |
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Jan 18, 2012 23:02
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Trust me, you DON'T want to see it. You'll be disappointed I can post when it arrives, but it's a boring work thing. I print brackets, frame pieces, and other similar "structural" stuff that needs to be a specific size/shape but too much of a pain in the rear end to make from scratch using other means. It really is not much to look at. The stuff I ordered today is literally a featureless square with three holes through it.
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Jan 18, 2012 23:53
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Precision, Material (aluminum in one, high-def plastic in the other), and My Time. When I print some things I have to do a fair bit of post-finishing because even a finely-tuned home 3D printer can't make something even close to the kind of hole a drill bit and drill press gives you. Of course sometimes I need a funny yet precise shape, or a hole size that they don't make a drill for Some amount of design can reduce the post-finishing I have to do, but my Makerbot can't handle that kind of precision so I'm seeing how well a model printed by a fab shop will compare. Also needless to say I can't print in sintered aluminum or anything on my Makerbot. Finally, there is the benefit of "Just Getting It Done" by someone else and not having to babysit a print at home because sometimes I don't have the time to spend fiddling with the printer in my workshop, sometimes after I've refined a design sufficiently it's actually cheaper to have a fab shop do a better job of it and ship it to me (in terms of cost of hours, etc) so it's as close to ready-to-roll as possible when it arrives. So as an experiment I have ordered my model printed in two different materials (sintered aluminum actually being cheaper - that was a surprise) from two different fab houses. I was going to wait until they arrived, give them a good looking-over, and decide if getting it done from a fab house is worth it. But unfortunately the more I think about it the less I think I can actually work this into my usual workflow - even if the models are super awesome. I get everything else I need from anyone (including PCB prototypes) within days, never more than 1 week. If I'm looking at a 3-week turnaround from 3D fab houses for my models with no real option to expedite them, that means I'm getting my parts in-hand roughly 2+ weeks AFTER I can get literally everything else I need and use. I am having a hard time figuring out how I can use that in my workflow for anything other than the most "no deadline" of projects. But this isn't my bitching thread  and I am probably putting the cart before the horse - first get the models, then see if I'm way ahead of myself before worrying about anything else.
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Jan 19, 2012 02:20
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Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm mixing up terms because in many ways this is all new to me. Also I am dumb e: Shipping to Canada takes about a week for UPS standard; closer to 2 or more for Priority Mail USPS or similar. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 19, 2012 |
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Jan 19, 2012 02:28
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CRUNCH
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Jan 19, 2012 19:36
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Welp, that's that. 
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Jan 19, 2012 19:37
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The replacement ABS retainer ring gave, no telling yet what else it hooped in the process. (I have a couple different acrylic cements, the assembly has long ago cross the point of being more cemented acrylic than virgin acrylic ) The retainer ring is my third now. Also my second print head. I may have reached "fuckit" threshold.
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Jan 19, 2012 19:46
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That's a really cool model, and you're not the only one who has issues like you mentioned - printing parts for me is often an iterative process.
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Jan 21, 2012 18:40
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That's super cool, and a great insight into actual revolutionizing of a workflow or process (i.e. "something other than bottle openers and coat hangers")
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Jan 23, 2012 19:57
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You know, I gotta say that Ponoko has a pretty baller progress tracker for orders.
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Jan 23, 2012 21:15
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Both of them are fab houses. As in, send them a (for example) 3D design and they will print it on their fancy non-hobby-grade machines. But let's use those fake armour pieces from a few posts above as an example: As the creator/owner/whatever: 1) Open an account 2) Upload the design, possibly indicate which material(s) suitable for making it with 3) Then do one (or both) of the following:
The fab houses just have their system made so that it's the same back-end whether you're sending them a design file and saying "make me one of these" or whether you designed some jewelery and are telling them "hey could you let people order these in plastic, gold, or silver and you make & ship them and handle it all for me?"
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Jan 23, 2012 23:09
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Super.Jesus posted:you can smooth out the lines with a weak heat gun. As long as you don't mind the rest of it "smoothing out" as well, and uncontrollably!  Soft wax is a good example of a material that is really best just buffed or something instead of melted to smooth it out. It's so ridiculously easy to deform and melt that while a heater seems logical, there's really just no control over the process.
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Jan 24, 2012 04:25
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There's also the advantage that - compared to 3.0mm - you shovel more 1.75mm filament for the same amount of print volume. Which means finer control also because there is less tension built up in the filament itself between the compression of from the feed and the print head because you're not working quite as hard to shove 1.75mm as you are to shove 3.0mm. (The shorter the distance between the feed and the print head, the less backed-up tension you need to deal with as well.) But there's nothing WRONG with 3.0mm. Short answer is that 1.75 seems to be the direction all the new stuff is moving in.
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Jan 26, 2012 19:56
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Jan 28, 2012 22:17
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Looks like both my Shapeways and Ponoko orders are shipped; Ponoko was a couple days or so faster. Since it's UPS (standard I assume) it'll be a week or so for them to get to me. Can't wait to find out how I hosed up the models I requested!
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Jan 30, 2012 16:56
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Here's gcode for a 10mm cube if that's what you're after. No raft or anything fancy, though of course there are commands for turning on the heaters, etc. The outside surface is solid but the inside of the cube is a grid "honeycomb" pattern. http://pastebin.com/XpxvJ7NC
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Jan 31, 2012 18:57
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Officially petitioning for a thread title change: Measure with Micrometer, Mark with Chalk, Cut with Axe - the 3D Printer Megathread!
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Feb 1, 2012 21:23
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 17:28 |
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My Ponoko order arrived. I used "3D Printed Durable Fine" material. It's kind of mint-candy green colour. Very smooth. Some line-like artifacts visible on a couple sides if you look closely. The face is really really smooth. Dimensions are right on. It was well-packed. It stinks, with a sort of solvent-ish smell (I expect it will outgass after a while.) It looks great. It feels just a little bit "grabby" in that way grippy plastics do. This little thing cost just over 50 bucks all told. My Makerbot-style 3D designing does a good job playing to my Makerbot's strengths, but there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed - especially since you pay by volume. (Note: the hole on the left has just been drilled out, which I did before I remembered to take a picture.) Ponoko (USA) was pretty easy to use. They finished my order a couple days ahead of Shapeways. Still my Shapeways order (from Europe) was somewhat cheaper and should be here later today - so basically almost the same turnaround time in the end. Click should you need to see it closer. 
The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Feb 1, 2012 |
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Feb 1, 2012 21:43
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