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csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
The old thread was eleven years old and it's definitely time for a refresher.

Welcome to the 3D Printing Megathread!

Desktop additive manufacturing has come a ridiculously long way since the last thread was posted. You can spend anywhere from as little as a couple hundred USD to as much as you could possibly want and start churning out Warhammer armies and custom dildos in a matter of days! With as much variety and choice available to the 3D printing beginner it's hard to know where to turn and what to do once you've gotten there. This thread is for:

  • Figuring out what kind of printer is right for you
  • Troubleshooting printer issues of all sorts
  • Showing off sweet prints, weird materials, or the spot where your printer used to be after it burst into flame

And on that note, a word of caution: :siren: 3D PRINTING CAN BE DANGEROUS :siren: FDM printers melt plastic at hundreds of degrees C for hours at a time. Resin printers use chemicals that are hazardous to human health and the environment. Dodgy manufacturers can and will skimp on build quality to increase profit margins which increases the risk of something going wrong. Always always ALWAYS be well-informed about your printer and its particular quirks before leaving it running unattended. ALWAYS use recommended personal protective equipment when handling resin. NEVER let children who are not fully educated on the risks - or anyone else for that matter - use your printer.

Okay then!

Selecting a Printer

What kind of printers are available?

Broadly speaking there are two categories of 3D printing that are accessible to the hobby market. The first is the filament deposition modeling, or FDM printers, which melt spools of plastic filament and squirt the plastic out of a hot nozzle to form a model vertically layer by layer. This technology has been in the hobby arena for many years and there are quite a lot of materials and printers available at a wide range of costs. The second is the stereolithography, SLA, or resin printers. These printers use a light source to solidify a material, usually UV light on liquid resin, to form models also vertically and layer by layer.

Which one is right for me?

The type of printer you choose to get is usually dictated by the sort of things you want to create.

FDM printers:
  • Produce larger objects. Typical build volumes are 7" / 180mm cube (Prusa Mini), 8" / 205mm cube (Prusa MK3S), 9"/250mm-ish cube (Ender 3), and it can go up from there.
  • Decent to great detail. FDM printers can use a wide range of nozzles to make tiny little lines or really big lines, and with sufficient tuning a printer with small diameter nozzle can produce very small features.
  • Use a wide variety of plastics. PLA, PETG, ABS, flexible TPM, nylon, carbon fiber, poo poo that glows in the dark or changes color, plastic impregnated with wood or iron filings - filament manufacturers get pretty drat creative.
If you wanted to make large piece of terrain for tabletop gaming, a desktop organizer, or something to hold your phone in your car then an FDM printer might be right for you.

Resin printers:
  • Produce smaller objects for costs equivalent to FDM printers. Entry level resin printers start around 5" x 3" x 6" / 129 x 80 x 160 mm (Elegoo Mars, Anycubic Photon). Large scale resin printers like the Peopoly Phenom can print a human scale Black Panther mask in one shot, but as of this writing they'll set you back a couple thousand USD.
  • Great to really loving great detail out of the box. Taking the Anycubic Photon as an example, XY (side to side) resolution is 0.05mm / 5 microns and Z (vertical) resolution is 0.01mm / 1 micron.
  • Resins come in a wide variety of colors but not as many basic material choices. Some resin manufacturers like Siraya Tech tout a wide range of material properties, like flexibility or hardness or heat resistance for metal casting, but on the balance there are fewer choices than there are in the FDM space.
If you want to stick it to Wizards of the Coast and Games Workshop and print yoself a tabletop army, or make tiny molds for metal casting tiny tooling, then a resin printer is the choice for you.


What You Need To Print

Aside from a printer, obviously, both FDM and resin printers have consumables and tools which will make the printing experience better.

FDM printing

Filament
Filament usually comes in 1kg spools. The world has pretty much standardized on filament with a 1.75mm diameter - 3mm diameter used to be a thing but to my knowledge there are no currently produced printers that use it. There are too many types of filament to effectively compare them all here, but All3dp has a good comparison post that's updated regularly.

Filament quality can vary wildly by manufacturer. For best results here are some goon-recommended vendors in the US:

Hypnolobster posted:

There's really no reason to buy filament from random overseas brands that come and go on Amazon.

Jessie PLA from printed solid, IC3D for ABS or PETG, Atomic Filament for the same any techier filled ABS/PETG filaments. Taulman for nylon and PC.

Hatchbox is another good US vendor.

For Eurogoons, Prusa makes and sells their own high quality filament in PLA, PETG, Polycarbonate, ASA, and PVB.

Recommendations for Canadians:

MustardFacial posted:

filaments.ca and Spool3D make fairly decent stuff in in my experience.

And for Ausgoons:

Dia de Pikachutos posted:

3dfillies.com [based in Melbourne AU] have been pretty good for me, and they have improved their PLA+ filament progressively over the last 18 months. I use it pretty much exclusively.

Hot end components
The hot end, the part what gets real toasty and poops out filament, is the number one location of wear-and-tear in an FDM printer. Filament clogs which end up destroying parts of the hot end are a sad fact of life, so it's a good idea to stock up on the following:
  • Nozzles. Brass nozzles with a 0.4mm diameter aperture are pretty much standard, but nozzles come in a lot of different materials and aperture sizes. Note: not all printers use the same size nozzle! Check what your printer uses before buying a crapload.
  • Thermistors. The component which monitors the active temperature of the hot end usually has very fragile wires which can be accidentally broken while cleaning or moving the hot end.
  • PFTE tubes. If your hot end has a PFTE tube to guide the filament from the extruder motor into the heated section of the hot end, buy up some extras - PFTE eventually breaks down under heat and can contribute to clogs.

Resin printing

Gloves and eye protection
Get a lot of disposable gloves and some eye protection. UV curable resin is a skin and eye irritant and you absofuckinglutely do not want resin to cure on your flesh. The process is exothermic and can cause burns. If you do get some on yourself, flush the affected area with isopropyl alcohol or water and DO NOT let it get exposed to sunlight until cleaned.

Resin
UV curable resin is sold in 0.5L and 1L bottles. Once you have a model and slice it, the slicing software will give you an estimate of how much resin will be used up so you can gauge how much you need to buy (more than the slicer says - account for failures!). Some popular vendors are Elegoo and Siraya Tech. If all you want is to print a model and paint it afterwards, Elegoo Ceramic Gray is a classic that provides a good neutral for priming and painting.

Washing Fluid
Different resins have different requirements for post-print washing. Many are washed using IPA (isopropyl alcohol, not the beer) - 99% is great, 91% will get you there. During the pandemic IPA was hard to source so water washable resins became more popular. Household cleaners like Simple Green are also used for both water-washable and IPA washable resins.

:siren: All used resin washing fluid, even water, is a hazardous material and should not be disposed of in a household drain! The fluid can be reused until it starts looking cloudy. Pour off used washing fluid to a spare transparent container and blast it with UV light in a curing station or sunlight to cure out any large amount of resin, then filter the resin chunks and dispose of them. Ultimately the washing fluid may be too contaminated to cure out excess resin and it will remain cloudy. At that point, dispose of the fluid according to your local municipality's rules for disposing hazmat like old paint or lead acid batteries.

A UV light source
You will need a source of UV light to cure the UV resin. There are prebuilt curing stations like the Anycubic Wash and Cure, ad-hoc curing stations like a UV fingernail polish hardener, a wide range of DIY solutions involving UV light sources (this can be hazardous to the eyes! DO NOT look directly at any source of UV light), or even Mister Golden Sun if you want to just sit your print outside for a while.

A tool to remove the print from the plate
Resin printers tend to have an extremely hard attachment to the build plate since the additive strategy involves forcibly peeling the cured resin off the film covering the light source. Most printers will come with a tool like a putty scraper that is intended to get under the build plate attachment and gently pry off - this is a process that takes practice and patience and may result in gouged hands if you slip. There is really only one sane solution in TYOOL 2021: buy a flex plate and just pop the print off when you're done. Easy peasy!

Printing Things: The General Workflow

Get you a Model

All 3D printing starts with a model - this is a file which describes the 3D shape that you're going to print. They're usually STL, OBJ, 3MF, or similar files.

Finding pre-built models
If you're looking for something prebuilt, Thingiverse, PrusaPrinters, and MyMiniFactory are the ones I use. Browse or search these sites to find something you'd like to try to print and download the model.

Creating custom models
If you're looking to make something from scratch, there's Tinkercad, FreeCAD, Fusion360, Blender, ZBrush, and others. Each of these have their pros and cons which are beyond the scope of this OP, but each of them should have a pretty decent stock of tutorial videos on Youtube and the posters in this thread would be happy to help with specifics.

I didn't mention OpenSCAD. OpenSCAD clicks with some users, usually people whose brains have already been ruined by computer programming, and really does not work well at all for others. It's also got some major limitations such as how it produces 3D object files with curved surfaces (it doesn't). Suffice to say that if you try it and you can make what you want to make, that's fantastic, but you may find that investing time in learning one of the aforementioned solutions is better for general purpose object modeling.

Slicing

Once you've got your model, it must be sliced. Neither FDM nor resin printers understand 3D object files in their raw form. An FDM printer accepts a series of instructions in gcode format that describe how the print head should move, what temperature it should set, how much plastic to extrude at any given time, etc. Resin printers need to know which pixels in their light source to illuminate for how long, and how fast and how often to raise the print bed.

FDM slicers
At the time of this writing PrusaSlicer is the slicer to beat. It's a fork of an earlier slicing software named slic3r which is maintained by the company which produces Prusa printers, but it can slice 3D object files and produce gcode for any FDM printer. Cura is the other big player in this space. Both allow for easy setting of material properties and printer parameters and extremely fine-grained tuning when necessary.

Resin slicers
In contrast to FDM printers which are de facto standardized on gcode, desktop resin printers are more restricted in what they can accept. Chitubox is the slicer used for Anycubic and Elegoo printers. Lychee is another option.

Upload to the printer
Once the object file is sliced the result is sent off to the printer. In the olden times this would mean keeping your printer tethered to your computer via a USB serial port and controlling it with something like Pronterface, but the world has moved on. Gcode can be transferred to an FDM printer by means of an SD card, USB stick (if supported), onboard Wi-fi (if supported), or a discrete printer controller like Octoprint (developed and maintained by forums poster foosel!). The slicing result for a resin printer is generally moved to the printer on a USB stick. In any case, once the sliced data is on the printer that's it! Tell the printer to print that model according to the specific instructions on the printer, then it's time to sit back and churn out some plastic poo poo.

Resin print postprocessing
If you're using a resin printer then you must postprocess the print once it's done being built. This involves two steps: washing and curing.

Washing
Washing the print removes stray uncured resin from the nooks and crannies and prepares the surface for curing. Depending on the resin, a wash will be in isopropyl alcohol (IPA), water, or some other substance recommended by the resin manufacturer. Place the model in a container of washing liquid, swirl it around, brush the little crevices gently with a soft toothbrush.

Curing
Curing is the process of exposing every surface of the print to a UV light source in order to harden the outer surface. Uncured prints will have a tacky sticky feeling and aren't fully safe to handle or paint. Stick the print under the UV light source of your choice until the surface is no longer tacky and can't be scratched by a fingernail.

----------
In Case Of Problems


oh god how did this happen

If you're having an issue printing and want to post about it in this thread, we recommend including the following:
  • Model of printer you're using
  • A link to the 3D object file you're trying to print, if possible
  • The material you're using to print
  • Your slicer settings - temperature and speeds at a minimum for FDM, exposure time for bottom layers and exposure time for regular layers for resin
  • What you've tried to troubleshoot the problem so far

Happy printing!

csammis fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Feb 6, 2022

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csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
3D Printer Recommendations - Updated July 2021

This post is for collecting entry level 3D printer recommendations for people who are looking to purchase their first printer or for those who are into one technology and looking to swap to the next. If you have a printer which you think belongs here PM me to get it added! Prices are in USD.

FDM Printers

There have been multi-page slapfights over entry level FDM printers. The order in which these are presented is descending cost and not any sort of implicit recommendation. Please don't yell at me :ohdear:

Prusa MK3S+ - $750 kit, $1000 assembled
  • Build volume: 9.84"×8.3"×8.3" (25×21×21 cm)
  • Pros:
    • Either assembled or from kit, the MK3S+ is a powerhouse which does not require any tweaking or upgrades beyond what comes in the box.
    • The machines are made in the Czech Republic from high quality material and the manufacturer has an excellent reputation for support.
    • The kit can be assembled with a minimum of mechanical aptitude (plus the guides are very thorough).
  • Cons:
    • The price, obviously.

Prusa Mini - $350 kit, $400 assembled
  • Build volume: 7"x7"x7" (18x18x18 cm)
  • Pros:
    • Cheaper than the Prusa MK3S+
    • Like the MK3S+, does not require any tweaking or upgrades out of the box
    • The machines are made in the Czech Republic from high quality material and the manufacturer has an excellent reputation for support.
  • Cons:
    • Smaller build volume than the MK3S+
    • Currently has longer lead times than the MK3S+

Ender 3 Pro - $210
  • An upgraded version of the Ender 3, which is according to Creality "a machine that makes love because it's hackable as hell."
  • Build volume: 8.7"x8.7"x9.8" (220 x 220 x 250mm)
  • Pros:
    • Very budget-friendly
    • Lots of quality of life and safety features over the original Ender 3 - magnetic build plate attachments, upgraded power supply
    • There are many upgrades that the community has developed for the printer which can be printed or sourced to enhance its baseline capabilities
  • Cons:
    • There are some "required" upgrades which almost every Ender 3 owner has discovered are necessary - stiffer bed springs to reduce the need to level the bed as frequently, all-metal extruder because the stock plastic one tends to break easily.
    • Manufactured on a budget - build quality may be inconsistent. I don't remember hearing anything about manufacturer support.

Resin Printers

Sockser posted:

For resin it’s like uh
“Pick the one that looks the coolest from the Elegoo, Photon, Phrozen lineup”

In terms of mechanical complexity resin printers are stupidly simple when compared to FDM printers and that's reflected in the fact that all resin printers are basically the same. They all use LCDs to emit UV light and they all use a single stepper motor to move the Z axis. The deciding factor of which specific printer to get will come down your individual budget and the following technology choices:

  • Mono LCDs emit a smaller spectrum of light around the UV wavelength than non-mono LCDs and so can produce more UV per milliwatt, which means shorter exposure times per print layer. Translation: they're faster.
  • 4K LCDs pack more smaller pixels per inch than their 2K counterparts, which means that they can light up smaller individual areas. That increases the resolution of the print in the X-Y dimensions. Resin printers are already so high resolution that this may not be actually visible to the naked eye.

csammis fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 27, 2021

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

cakesmith handyman posted:

Has anyone got a big matrix of filament types vs use/properties? Like this has uv tolerance, this shrinks after printing, this is better to be left on the dash of a hot car, that sort of thing?

It’s not a matrix but All3dp has a big list with material properties. I didn’t see UV tolerance specifically though.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Ambrose Burnside posted:

Anybody know of a good practical photographic comparison of the fine print resolution between 50/47 -micron pixel standard-res printers and 35 micron ‘4k’ printers? and/or between older color screens and mono screens? i’m running into the limits of what my Mars Pro can accurately represent for tooling/molds at very small scales and i wanna stoke the fiscally-imprudent “buy a sonic mini 4k” fires in my loins.

There’s a YouTube video linked in the thread second post about choosing a printer that compares 2K and 4K print results which might help you.


edit: I genuinely considered when I made that post writing something like “the differences may not be visible to the human eye but thread poster Ambrose Burnside might care about it for incredibly small tooling” :v:

csammis fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Aug 22, 2021

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Martytoof posted:

Man, for the longest time I was getting nothing but failed prints on my Photon. Then I switched resins and I can’t get one to fail unless I try. I’m not even being particularly careful right now, doing things like printing flat on the build plate, rushing exposures, and things are still coming out great. Guess it all goes to show there are just some poo poo resins out there.

Name and shame. What brands are you / were you using?

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
And don’t bother with the instruction booklet in the box - use the online copy. Same content but with a lot of people contributing what worked for them. I had a bitch of a time getting my Prusa’s X axis rods seated in their end brackets until I read that someone used rubberized gloves to get a good grip on the assembly. I did the same thing and it went right together.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

biracial bear for uncut posted:

I just discovered proof that everybody in this thread is a loving amateur and we really need to step up our game.

This was apparently printed on an Elegoo Mars 2 according to the person that posted the video.

https://i.imgur.com/o5TlUJH.mp4

EDIT: There's a god drat circular saw at the bottom of the frame, too.

:kstare:

mystes posted:

Add in some rodents and this is a great opportunity for a tiny home improvement show called "This Old Mouse"

I would watch the absolute gently caress out of that show

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

For what it’s worth I’ve never found a silk PLA that works worth a drat for small details. IIRC the “silky” texture is from mixing TPU into the PLA and it’s just a nightmare to get the extrusion right on that blend.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Talorat posted:

Is there a write up anywhere that gives the pros and cons of various filament materials? I’d like to learn more about what is best suited for what.

There is one linked in the OP in one of the sections on FDM.

quote:

Also does anyone know if you can recycle PLA prints in the United States?

No it can’t. PLA can be composted by industrial processes (not your backyard compost heap but high temperatures and pressures humidity) but it isn’t recyclable anywhere as far as I know. Periodically someone will come up with a process for grinding up print scraps to make “new” filament but it’s not an economical process at all.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
The absolute most useful thing I’ve printed for myself in five years was a little PETG mesh to sit in my dishwasher’s silverware tray so I could toss chopsticks in it. Previously the chopsticks would just fall through the tray’s holes so I’d have to hand wash them. It makes a positive difference in my life at least once a day. Two minutes to design (in OpenSCAD :haw: ) and it was surely less than ten cents worth of plastic.

e: probably the objectively most useful thing I’ve ever printed were face masks for a local volunteer group at the beginning of the pandemic. Probably cranked out three hundred of them over the course of a few weeks and I know they made a difference in people’s lives…still, that dishwasher tray owns so hard

csammis fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Nov 5, 2021

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

w00tmonger posted:

Re: wall art. I think I found what I'm looking for.

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/home/3d-wall-panel-6

There are a few different styles,. It I'm thinking of printing enough of these to fill a 18x24 inch frame.

That is rad as hell, I love this idea :)

quote:

PLA should be fine for long term looks right?

Does the wall get sunlight? UV will probably discolor it over time.

quote:

Considering ultra Matt white pla, or possibly just printing it and painting it after some post proccessing

If it were me I’d go the painting route with PLA for two reasons: UV resistance, and white PLA is a notorious bitch to print with because titanium dioxide inhibits good printing properties.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Sockser posted:

My understanding is that the wash and cure spinny boi is no good for water washable— gotta just hose those down and brush them? I guess??
(I have not used water washable resin)

The “wash” part of wash and cure stations are just magnetically stirred buckets. They’re fine for water washable, or Simple Green, or any washing fluid really.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Ambrose Burnside posted:

Anybody with a resin printer have any experience doing z-column maintenance? ran into someone saying cleaning the screw and nut solved visible layer line issues they were having, and on reflection its very odd that people mostly disregard that entire part of the machine after initial setup and tramming, and that I don’t see that come up as a potential cause of a-step-related print issues.

I have to say it’s never occurred to me to actually clean the resin printer’s lead screw, but I have dropped sewing machine oil on it twice in the two or so years I’ve had it. My resin printer is covered 99.9999% of the time unless I’m taking a print off or putting resin in. It doesn’t have the dog hair and dust problems that the rods and lead screws on my FDM printer have.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

InternetJunky posted:

My Mars3 sounds like a rusty door every layer. Any recommendations on grease/oil for it?

I use sewing machine oil on my printers’ lead screws

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Am I right in remembering someone saying white filament is trickier to print with than other colours? Something to do with it needing a lot more pigment than most colours, so it doesn't flow as well?

Yes, titanium dioxide.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
Me last night: hooray, at 8am tomorrow after 36 hours of printing I’ll have a big slug of my own! It’s looking good!

8AM this morning: lol





Merry Christmas 3D printing thread!

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

GreenBuckanneer posted:

Yeah, i used four sheets of printer paper since someone said that was best.

You mean four sheets of paper stacked on top of each other? That’s too much. You’re supposed to use one sheet of A4 paper.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

GreenBuckanneer posted:

second successful print





Seems overexposed (80% UV) but seems to me like progress!

Good progress indeed!

…that is cured, right? Because it looks pretty shiny and you’re handling it with bare hands. Just want to make sure because regardless of what might have been read there is no conflicting information about whether skin exposure to uncurled resin is safe: it is not.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
Oof, Facebook. Those loving people.

There might be a grain of truth to the idea that curing a test print like that could “mess it up.” Curing causes thin flat prints to curl up and (I think) causes a bit of shrinkage all around. Different resins will probably behave differently in that respect.

But even so it is never safe to handle uncured resin with your bare hands. If your test print “requires” that it remains uncured you must still use gloves to handle it. Cure it before you throw it away.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Justa Dandelion posted:

Is 3d printing to the point that you can print useful things like appliance parts yet (in a cost effective way)? I've been fascinated by the technology for years but it seemed like it's still mostly for printing miniatures and things like that still. Can a good printer be considered a home improvement tool yet?

I think the answer comes down to modeling and what “cost effective” means. A home FDM printer can absolutely print a replacement part for a dishwasher like, say, part of the silverware basket. First, can you find a 3D model of that part? If not you’ll need to make one yourself which is totally its own skill. Once you have the model you’ll need a filament that can handle high water temperature. Those definitely exist but depending on application could be relatively expensive per roll - you’re going to have to print a lot of silverware basket parts to “break even.”


e: my real-world example is exactly what I just described. I wanted a part for my dishwasher’s silverware basket so chopsticks could sit in it without falling through. I took measurements, made a little grate in OpenSCAD, printed it in PETG. Lo, the chopsticks stay in the basket!

Now was that worth a 3D printer, roll of PETG, and the time it took to learn extremely simple modeling? For me yes because I already had those things.

e2: what I’m saying you can’t think of it like a replicator from Star Trek. A 3D printer is very capable of those things but it’s not plug-and-chug.

csammis fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jan 15, 2022

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

D-Pad posted:

What other options would you suggest?

For cable management? Nylon cable wrap

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Hypnolobster posted:

This is the way. There's really no reason to buy filament from random overseas brands that come and go on Amazon.

Requoting this from the old thread

Added to the OP!

If non-US goons have good filament brands that they recommend let me know. I don't want the OP to end up too US-centric.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Droogie posted:

At the risk of causing another fight in this thread, who is your US go-to non-amazon filament place? I don't want to fund more dick rockets for that bald gently caress with my like 25 dollar purchases.

Hypnolobster’s post on filament recommendation is in the thread OP :ssh:

I’ll add the Aus and Canadian recommendations this weekend!

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Isometric Bacon posted:

As someone with a FDM printer, whose very curious about SLA printing, is there a reason you might want to go with a smaller build volume than a large one?

Like does a larger one use more resin or print time?

The only reason I can think of to go smaller rather than larger is just a question of cost and how much space you have to put the printer. A larger printer only uses more resin in the sense that you can print more at the same time. If you print a single 28mm scale minifig it doesn't matter what size of build plate it's on, it'll use the same amount of resin.

Print time for resin printers is always a function of the number of layers, not the X-Y dimensions of the plate, so you'd get no gains there.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
Could we not do personal attacks and body shaming in this thread? Thanks.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
I don’t give a good goddamn whether someone posts on SA or is famous. This isn’t 2005 and this isn’t GBS.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Bad Munki posted:

Man, it seems like sometimes I’ll go a month or two without touching the printer at all, and then suddenly I’m on it all day every day.

Anyhow, really pleased with how some storage caddies for my lathe tooling & accessories is coming together. Couldn’t stand the parts hanging out loose in the drawer.









I have another of the tool holder trays on the way, in yet another color. Willfully going for the clown aesthetic on my color selection here.

Nice! I like the little filament-as-indicator holes next to the bits.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Bad Munki posted:

It’s actually just fluorescent paint glopped in there :ssh:

To my old and bad eyes it looked exactly the color of the orange trays in the next pictures :v:

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Marshal Prolapse posted:

I’ve been trying to figure out if I need Supports for FDM, is it something I should just ensure is turned off?

Models with extreme overhangs need supports, models without don’t. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposal for FDM printing. Your slicer should be able to tell you when they’re necessary by detecting the overhang angle and generating support material appropriate for your printer.

That said, benchy is specifically designed to not have supports enabled because it’s a test of how your printer performs on difficult cases like bridging (how far the printer can safely extrude over empty space without sagging). Supports defeat the purpose of some of those tests.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
That’s dependent on your exact printer and its speeds and cooling capabilities. I’m phoneposting right now but there are test prints on Thingiverse for determining at what angle your printer needs to start using supports.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
:siren: Call For Updated Recommendations :siren:

I made the OP in July 2021 and, shockingly, I think it's a good idea to keep it up to date. I'd like to get the printer recommendations post updated for TYOOL 2022 as well as any new or changed information which should be in the first post.

One change I was thinking of...is it even worth mentioning 2K and non-mono resin printers anymore? My good ol' Mars Pro is chugging along just fine but I don't know if I'd recommend anyone buy such a thing new at this point.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

Rockman Reserve posted:

Does an Elegoo Mars (red case, black base if it matters - I think there were a few revisions before the Mars 2+) need a z-spacer to install a flex plate?

Yes. Depending on flex plate supplier there might be an STL for you to print one. I just used a couple of spare M3 spacers since a) I had them on hand and b) I didn't even think that other 3D printing folks would have had this exact problem.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
Prusa printers don't have bed level adjustment. Their beds are fixed. What they do have is a print head adjustment value called "Live Z Adjust" which, after the extruder has figured out via its probe where the bed is, allows the user to nudge the nozzle closer to the bed in order to get the proper squish. Live Z Adjust is only ever done while a print is actually going on so that the amount of squish is immediately obvious. The Live Z Adjust factor exists to compensate for two things mainly: the relative error between the probe's end and the nozzle tip, and the different thicknesses of flexible print sheets. The number "zero" or the phrase "zeroing" never comes up in the user interface.

End of the day:

The Eyes Have It posted:

Skip the um, actually stuff and just tell them to follow the extremely step-by-step instructions with visual aids in his Prusa printer's (excellent, unusually so for 3D printers) documentation.

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution

StrixNebulosa posted:

- different filament colors need different temperatures.

So I've noticed in a lot of your posts you're printing with white filament. Judging from this post you've probably noticed this by now, but white filament is one of the hardest to print for a given type of plastic. They add titanium dioxide to make it white and that alters the melting characteristics significantly compared to natural or any other color-only additive that I know of. It sucks whenever white is shipped as the sample with new printers because it can fool people new to printing into thinking that the machine is harder to deal with than it might actually be.

If you're having weird issues where the temperature doesn't seem to ever work right, and you're using white filament, try using a different (or no) color and you might have a sudden burst of success!

edit: that said, your low poly models are turning out rad as hell! I'm glad you're having a good time with it. 3D printing is so much fun :)

csammis fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Aug 11, 2023

csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
I was cleaning out my 3D printing supply stuff and found a small assortment of brass MK10 nozzles - two each of 0.2mm, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8 - as well as a pair of MK10 heater blocks. I haven't had a printer which takes MK10 hardware for a few years but I guess I made sure I had spare parts.

Free to a good home! I'll ship anywhere globally. First to post takes the lot.

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csammis
Aug 26, 2003

Mental Institution
I'm doing some resin printing after taking a year off and am having a problem that I'm having trouble describing.

The part in question is a cylinder with grooves in it, with cam profiles inside the grooves. The grooves are 2mm wide. The entire cylinder is about 30mm in diameter. I'm printing it flat on the build plate (a flex plate) so the grooves are parallel to the build surface. Printing in Siraya Tech Blu in what Lychee Slicer thinks is a good profile, 11s exposure with 100mm/s retraction on normal layers. Ambient temperature in the room is about 30C. The printer is an Elegoo Mars Pro.





The issue is that resin is curing inside those grooves and filling them up. The details of the cams inside the grooves and most of the supports are encased in solid resin. It's not an issue of liquid resin getting stuck that is later getting cured, it's definitely cured before the part even gets washed.

First of all, what do I even call this type of failure? Second, is there anything i can do to prevent it? The resin is transparent so I was thinking that if the problem is light bleeding out around the part of the layer which is supposed to be curing...I have no idea how to approach that. I thought the FEP might be cloudy so I put a new one on yesterday but there has been no change.

Any thoughts?

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