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A glass bottle with a butyl rubber eyedropper would be ideal, but you could just suck it out with a plastic syringe in a pinch.
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Feb 3, 2013 21:29
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kafkasgoldfish posted:Just tweak the z screw and the bed leveling screws until the nozzle just about touches the table (say, the thickness of a sheet of paper away from it) in all four corners. Cakefool posted:What's the build platform made of? I learnt a good trick this week with a whiteboard pen - scribble on the bed & adjust until the marks come off but there's no force of contact Both of these techniques are good machinist's strategies and have been used for the better part of a century. When you're doing the paper thing, measure your paper with a vernier caliper or estimate that an average sheet of printer paper is 3/1000" thick. Place the paper on your build table and slowly bring the z-axis up while gently sliding the paper back and forth until it juuuust "bites" the surface. Now you know that the nozzle is .003 inches above the bed. If you were zeroing right on the bed, you would pull the paper out and bring it down that much further, but to have minimal clearance you can just leave it where it is. For the marker thing -- we used to use engineer's blue, but a dry erase sounds like a good alternative. Usually that is used for stuff that needs to be way more precise than a 3D printer, though, like lapping gauge blocks. I doubt you need (or indeed could attain) that much accuracy in a hobbyist-level machine.
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Feb 9, 2013 18:18
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I started out with Alias and Solidworks back in the late 90s, and I can tell you that the best general-purpose CAD modeling program out there today is Rhino. I personally switch back and forth between SW and Rhino these days depending on what I'm building, but I think Rhino is a better starting point for most people -- and if you're a student, you can get a full, unlimited license of just the modeler for like a hundred bucks. 400 or so for the modeler plus a bunch of renderers. There are always some things that some CAD apps do better, but these days McNeel has really knocked it out of the park.
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Feb 17, 2013 08:35
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Sooooo it's a fine-tip glue gun that feeds ABS filament, basically. Seems like you might have some problems with interlayer bonding.
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Feb 19, 2013 22:30
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Or you can just smear it with a thin layer of Bondo.
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Feb 26, 2013 03:41
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There's a lot of random stuff available at the Google 3D Warehouse http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ though a lot of it is quite low-res and blocky, and it's mostly buildings and furniture. It sounds like you want to be making scale models for wargaming or something. In that case, you can do something rather sneaky that I've made work a couple of times: rip the models directly from the DirectX calls used by a video game that has the thing you want in it. (World of Tanks, ArmA, Il-2, Need For Speed, etc). 1. Get 3D ripper DX http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm or another DX ripper 2. Boot up the game you want to use through the 3DRDX interface (this has about a 50% chance of working; if it doesn't, try another ripper or you may just be out of luck) 3. load up a scene that has the model you want to use in it 4. press the capture call hotkey and wait for it to save 5. close the game and see what model data you got 6. clean up the model data in Rhino, Maya, 3Ds, etc. (this is unavoidable and will take some practice) 7. convert to STL and print. It is a very time-consuming process, but I've successfully printed a number of video game characters and model airplanes (from HAWX) this way. e: 1/35 scale doesn't mean a thing; you'll be able to scale the model to any arbitrary size at a whole pile of places along the process, including just before printing.
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Mar 9, 2013 20:23
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Young Freud posted:Edit: BTW, Sagebrush, if I'm cleaning up models, what do I need to look for to get one ready to be printed. It needs to be a closed, watertight mesh. No holes, no open edges, no disconnected polygons. The surface or poly normals all have to be going in the same direction so there's a clear "inside" and "outside". Rhino has a good set of tools for doing this sort of cleanup.
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Mar 9, 2013 21:19
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Verizian posted:One of the main fears other luthiers express with 3D printing is the loss of character that mass production brings, My biggest worry with a 3D printed guitar would be it suddenly exploding from the stress of having the strings tightened. I'd imagine that with some newer materials and good control over the inter-layer bonding you could pull it off, though.
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Mar 16, 2013 05:54
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Does anyone know of an American source for this exact color of PLA? https://shop.ultimaker.com/en/consumables/pla-plastic-green075.html I love that green so much but the $40 + european shipping is kind of steep.
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Mar 20, 2013 02:39
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Yep, that is a thing you can do (to some extent) with most 3D printers, and indeed with most machine tools in general. There's a whole book series on how to bootstrap yourself a machine shop from basically nothing, relying on the ability of certain tools (like a lathe) to make improved parts for themselves. http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Metalworking-Shop-Scrap/dp/0960433082
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Mar 30, 2013 04:16
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New Zealand's Customs Minister says: people 3D printing piles of weed and stacks of ecstasy tablets will defeat our border protection strategies. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/132626/3d-printers-a-border-security-threat-minister 
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Apr 18, 2013 02:30
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I like Cura a lot, so try that if your machine can read the files it produces.
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Apr 18, 2013 22:18
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PYF awesome things found on Thingiverse http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:9753 
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Apr 30, 2013 06:32
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The Tools thread and the Metalworking threads have the occasional post from someone who's got/is building a CNC mill, but this is probably the best thread for talking specifically about CNC work, particularly the software. After all, there's very little difference between a desktop 3D printer and a desktop 3-axis CNC mill other than the materials it's made of and the tool you have mounted on the gantry. I know a fair bit about CNC machining if you're interested, though. To answer the first question: no, there are no good free 3+ axis CAM software packages.
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May 2, 2013 20:43
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Have you tried openSCAD? It's meant for 3D stuff but obviously you can do 2D with it as well if you just ignore the third axis. I haven't played with it a lot, but it seems quite powerful from what I've messed around with.
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May 3, 2013 02:19
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Another 3d-printed gun prototype. Supposedly this one requires nothing that can't be printed beyond a nail for the firing pin. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/05/03/this-is-the-worlds-first-entirely-3d-printed-gun-photos
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May 4, 2013 03:10
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CNC mills and lathes obviously have the advantage over 3D printing in accuracy, and if you're just making prismatic parts they're a lot faster too. There are two huge advantages to 3D printers, though, that are going to be more useful to the average hobbyist than extreme precision: 1) they can build arbitrary shapes in a single operation, without needing to think about entrance angles, fixturing, feeds and speeds, tooling, or any other details of milling processes. The Yoda head that everyone prints would be, at minimum, a four-sided machining job with at least seven toolchanges and all the associated zeroing and fixturing. 2) they're clean. When milling, everything on your stock block that isn't part of the model gets converted into dust and chips and distributed around the machine. 3D printers leave no mess. e: 2a) They're quiet. You can put a 3D printer in another room and run it overnight, but most CNC mills are going to be too much to sleep through. If you anticipate trying to make replacement parts for your vintage car's carburetor, or building tiny elaborate robot geartrains like the guy in that link does, for sure a traditional mill is the tool you want. For someone who rarely needs accuracy beyond 0.5mm and just wants a device to make doodads on their desktop with the least fuss, 3D printing is where it's at. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 04:33 on May 6, 2013 |
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May 6, 2013 04:28
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You get any old extruder (probably the bowden cable type would work best) and machine yourself some kind of adapter with a shaft that fits into a collet. Duh. You'll have a small build area and a very long build time, as most CNC mills aren't really made to reach the kind of speeds that a 3D printer can pull off, but it'd be neat to see.
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May 6, 2013 08:22
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If you're a mechanically inclined hobbyist and are okay messing with things to get them to work right, a full kit for a RepRap Mendel or the Prusa variant can be had for around $600-$700. It will produce top-notch parts when configured properly, and will have tons of community support and mods to improve performance. http://reprappro.com/Mono_Mendel http://www.mixshop.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=24&products_id=94&zenid=75fmhdr01bec0sjgfe9fil02f7 (note that the second one, while cheap, does not include the 3D printed parts so you'll need a friend with a well-set-up printer to make them for you) Also if you're okay with building smaller parts, here's a 6" Prusa that is only $520. http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/prusa-i3-kit.html If you want something pre-assembled, I dunno, maybe a Solidoodle? The physical machine is apparently a little chintzy at times but the parts it builds are good. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 03:52 on May 11, 2013 |
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May 11, 2013 03:29
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As far as attractive mechanisms go, I'm a really big fan of the look of the new MendelMax. This picture doesn't show it super well, but the back has an extended triangular shape to it that looks really good. I'm seriously thinking of buying one.
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May 14, 2013 23:36
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Try Autodesk 123D (the free version) or the Rhino plugin "grasshopper".
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May 15, 2013 17:37
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To explain FDM to my students, I break the thing down into stages to explain what's going on. First I use the glue gun analogy to explain how the plastic gets extruded into a filament. Then to explain how a long thin plastic strand can turn into a flat layer of arbitrary shape, I say "ever taken a rope and coiled it up on a table to make a flat disc? And then poked and pushed it around to make other shapes? That's a flat 2D object made out of nothing but a long thin rope. So imagine swirling your glue gun around and around until it makes a plastic disc of glue." And then finally to explain how it gets to a 3D object, I say "imagine taking a bunch of coasters and stacking them up into a cylinder, or drawing another glue gun disc on top of the first one so that it all sticks together." Seems to work pretty well. Some people are still hazy on the specifics but everyone seems to get the general concept well enough.
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May 21, 2013 05:03
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Oh hey, I've got one of those too! Picked it up at the Maker Faire this past weekend. Mine came with a reel of ABS instead of PLA, so watch out for that (I found the problem pretty fast and used some PLA I already had, but they promptly shipped out the new material). I'm also having problems with the z axis support plate that the nut goes into - it wobbles up and down as the lead screw rotates, meaning that some layers are thinner and squashed and others are thin, leaving a banded appearance in the part. If you have that problem (or if you don't) I'd love to know. It's an adorable and quiet little machine, though. I'm going to stick it on my desk at work and blow people's minds.
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May 22, 2013 18:13
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The z-axis doesn't use a standard z-coupler to connect the motor to the leadscrew; instead it uses a vinyl tube. You "screw" the leadscrew into one end, then slide the other end over the stepper shaft and ziptie it in place. Screwing the leadscrew into the tube is indeed a pain but it only takes a couple of minutes really. I didn't break anything while assembling it, but maybe Kabong did. It's a simple (ha) and cheap way of doing it, but I've had some slipping issues and I think it's contributing to my z-wobble. I think I'm going to create an actual z-coupler and upgrade it. Incidentally, you'll want a little knob to turn the z-axis up and down since without endstops you'll have to zero it manually before every print. I made this one; the hole is slightly undersized, so just grab the leadscrew with vise-grips and thread the knob on carefully about a quarter of an inch and it'll hold. The first layer may delaminate but don't worry about that. http://www.2shared.com/file/4lf6YD-B/knob.html e: thingiverse link http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:92633 Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 21:41 on May 22, 2013 |
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May 22, 2013 20:57
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There was a trio of Form 1s at the Maker Faire, and the detail on the parts seemed pretty phenomenal to me. Are you the guy who does jewelry? That's the only industry I can think of where the finish from a Form 1 would (possibly) be insufficient. The layers were invisible without a hand lens, and you could onlyl barely feel them when running your fingernail across the worst possible areas. Really cool to watch them print, too. You can see the laser flickering back and forth inside the resin as it traces out the outlines...looks very much like an early laser show or 1970s sci-fi "scanner" display. e: Form 1 is also much "cleaner" looking. At first glance I'd think it was some kind of medical or laboratory instrument, whereas the B9 still looks like someone's interaction design undergrad thesis project. We're getting one (a Form 1) this summer, so though I don't know what the exact timeline will be, I'll be able to tell you more in a month or two. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 05:29 on May 23, 2013 |
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May 23, 2013 05:26
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I've got a MendelMax 2 on order...for half the price of an R2X you get all the same features except the second extruder (add one yourself, it's fundamentally a reprap) and the display, but with a much larger (nearly double) build volume, and it's all built of solid aluminum extrusions and water-jet cut plates. Plus you can get it in anodized black just like the R2. Wouldn't hit the "take it out of the box and go" requirement that some people have, but as a tinkerer it sounded like a great choice. The overall structural rigidity of it was a massive selling point for me -- it amounts to a strong, fast, easily modifiable CNC frame suitable for mounting all sorts of neat tools.
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May 23, 2013 07:18
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Mister Sinewave posted:The scene feels all "you don't HAVE to re-calibrate everything, you GET to!" I sometimes think I'm the only person who doesn't care about getting an extra few microns of detail or whatever. I'm not so much about getting extra microns of detail -- 0.1mm is more than enough for me, and 0.2 works 90% of the time -- but I do love the idea of installing other tools on the frame. Turn it into a PCB mill, turn it into a chocolate extruder, turn it into a plotter, turn it into an eggbot. To me that's the main selling point of a Reprap, and the clearance granted for that kind of experimentation by the MM2 frame is a big part of why I bought it. Geirskogul posted:But glass without damaging coldspots is possible. It's just noisy, costly, and twice the fire hazard. You can take a PCB bed heater, put a 3/16" aluminum heat-spreader plate on top of it, and put glass on top of that and get the best of all worlds.
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May 24, 2013 22:47
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Two reasons that the filament wouldn't feed: either the nozzle is clogged so nothing can get out, or the drive mechanism isn't grabbing the filament tightly enough. Since you can extrude some filament manually it sounds like the second one is the problem. I don't know if your extruder uses a hobbed shaft or a friction system, but check and make sure that the filament is actually being gripped by the drive mechanism. Sometimes it will slip or "strip" the outside of the filament off without actually feeding it -- the telltale sign is that when you pull out the currently loaded filament there will be a flat spot worn into it. Is that's what's going on?
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May 26, 2013 02:02
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If the tension is too loose, the filament will just rub against the gear instead of "biting" in, and it will strip and slowly shave off the outer layer. So you want it tight enough that the filament below the extruder has a clear set of grooves from the feeder bolt (if you have that kind of extruder) cut into it. On the other hand, having the filament overly tight usually isn't a big problem, at least until you crank it down so hard that it actually binds in place -- the gear will still feed even if the filament is a little distorted from the pressure. However, if your extruder is clogged, an overly tight feeder will very rapidly and repeatedly strip the filament, because it has nowhere to go so it just grinds in place with all that pressure on it. Even a few seconds of trying to push against a clogged nozzle can cause stripping in that case. Pull out the filament and look at the grooves/notches/"teeth" on the little wheel on the motor shaft. Make sure that they're squeaky clean -- if you've been stripping filament, it's likely that they are clogged with plastic shavings, which means they don't bite into the filament any more, which means you strip more, and so on. Clean them out with a dental pick or the point of an x-acto knife, check the nozzle for any clogs, reinstall the filament with moderate pressure and you should be good to go. e: are you running ABS? ABS is more "mushy" than PLA and, I find, more prone to stripping. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 03:23 on May 26, 2013 |
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May 26, 2013 03:20
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Theoretically, 1.75mm filament has a better maximum resolution because the number of steps your extruder motor can do per revolution is fixed, so smaller filament = less material extruded per revolution. In reality printers are nowhere near the point that would start to make a difference, and nozzle diameter and accurate layer height are far more critical. On the other hand, 3mm filament is more dimensionally stable -- the Ultimakers use 3mm filament because it stands up better to being pushed through a bowden cable without kinks -- and small variations in the diameter amount to a smaller percentage difference than they would with 1.75mm filament, and that IS something you'll be pushing up against on the better machines. (variations in the diameter mean variations in the material extruded for a given number of revolutions, which is bad). It is stiffer and doesn't wind around tight corners as easily, but if you have enough room for the spool to uncoil you should be fine. It's hard to say for sure, but 3mm filament *seems* to be slightly more popular, and most of the newer machines come set up for 3mm by default, so I would go that way if I were you. With most extruder designs out there today, swapping from one filament size to another is just a matter of changing out the "hotend" -- the melt chamber and extrusion nozzle, which are integrated with the heater and thermal sensors into a single block. These usually cost about $50 or so. On a particularly crappy extruder design you might also have to change the drive gear or wheel. Everything else should be exactly the same.
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May 27, 2013 05:34
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Mister Sinewave posted:(I have a large-ish model I'd like 3D printed in ABS (preferred). Fits on a build platform for a Replicator or Replicator 2[X] but printing through Shapeways or i.materialize or ponoko would be like $1200+ ... i.e. new 3D printer money) Basically your options are to find a techshop/hackerspace that has a printer you can use, or build one yourself. There isn't really anything else in between.
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May 29, 2013 00:47
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My MendelMax frame shipped today!  I got it in black, with black extrusions, and a black heat spreader plate. Booya.Can't wait.
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May 30, 2013 21:34
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MendelMax 2 kit arrived today!  The box weighs about 30 pounds. As I have been seeking a machine with a lot of rigidity, this is a good sign. Can't wait to get started building it.
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Jun 1, 2013 22:04
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Neat. Stuff like wifi integration is a really big, important step for consumer usability, and hiding the mechanical parts definitely makes it more user-friendly. The idea of the part coming out the bottom is novel, and I like their design for cartridges -- they feed from the center and they appear to be reloadable from bulk filament. I feel like their video might be overly optimistic, though, or even a little misleading. "Power it on and go" is great, until a nozzle clogs or you get a filament blob on the end of the extruder or your parts stop sticking or any one of a million little things that could crop up. If someone buys a sub-$500 3D printer today expecting the same kind of reliability and maintenance as a desktop inkjet, I think they'll be rather disappointed. If these guys have found a way to make a supremely reliable machine that really doesn't need any maintenance, and they can hit a $300 price point, awesome. I don't think that's reasonable though. Also, the build area is very small, like Printrbot Jr. size. 15cm x 12cm x 10cm. I don't think that's large enough to build some of the parts they were showing in the video, like the cereal bowl and giant spoon, and that's a little sneaky. Their modeler looks like a good direction, though, and I could see it becoming really popular with the casual 3D printer owner if they can keep this ease of use while adding more powerful features. Try it out: http://pirate3d.com/demo/
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Jun 2, 2013 00:04
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Puttin' together the MendelMax. Opened up the package and found that it doesn't come with any of the electronics...support said "ah, yes, we just ship those separately, they should go out shortly" which is okay, I guess, but disappointing. I wanted to print noooowwww On the other hand, it's encouraging me to take my time assembling the frame, getting everything perfectly squared up and all that, so that's good. This thing is really nicely made. Getting away from the threaded rods and printed joints in favor of aluminum extrusions and laser-cut panels is a massive step in the right direction; in rigidity and mass the frame feels closer to a little Sher-Line mill than a reprap. I am confident that with a good spindle and motor you could use this frame to machine soft parts (wax, renshape, PCBs) pretty damned well. And getting everything in anodized black was definitely the right choice  e: they forgot to include some little bushing mounts. Luckily they have all the STLs available, so I can make them myself. Guess it is a reprap after all! Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 05:17
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Power it up so that the plastic gets melty (hold it with something like welding gloves, obviously, or at least oven mitts) and dig out as much as you can with a dental pick. You can also force new filament in by hand while the extruder is hot, purging stuff out the bottom, but if you've got crud buildup that risks getting a clog in the nozzle. Also, if you can disconnect the nozzle itself, I've found that holding the nozzle in a pair of vise-grips and heating it with a pocket torch for about 30 seconds tends to soften the plastic plenty to dig it out as well. Obviously don't do this to anything that's connected to the heater or thermistor, or while it's still attached to the PEEK.
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Jun 8, 2013 20:50
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Verizian posted:How difficult would it be to add a head for something like Bare Paint to a 3D printer? Probably not very! Check out any of the many syringe extruders on Thingiverse -- they're all designed to extrude small quantities (up to about 20mL) of compounds that are liquid at room temperature. The hardest part would be getting the thing tweaked to extrude the right amount and not drip extra goo where you don't want it, and that could probably be solved by messing around with retraction settings and the like.
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Jun 13, 2013 04:08
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A fan is for cooling the material as it's laid down on the print, so that it doesn't sag or drip or wiggle. It won't do anything to help a jam inside the extruder. What's happening exactly? Is material just not coming out at all? Is the filament stripping in place and not moving as the drive hob rotates? Are you getting a thin wiggly stream of plastic instead of a nice straight round one?
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Jun 16, 2013 02:49
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Ah, my bad -- that's true. Forgot about those fans. Add another one to the questions: How much filament can you pull out before you get to the melted zone? Is only the last half-inch or so blobby, or does it break off close below the hob? That will help diagnose if it's overheating and a fan will actually help. If you have a multimeter with a thermocouple probe, you could also measure the temperature at a few places inside the head while it's on and see what your temperature gradient looks like.
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Jun 16, 2013 03:16
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 14:30 |
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I feel like in order for 3D printers to truly catch on with the mainstream, besides all the other issues that need to be sorted out like reliability and maintenance, people really need to stop giving printers/parts thereof names like "lulzbot budaschnozzle".
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Jun 17, 2013 00:40
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