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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:
And on that note, a word of caution: 3D PRINTING CAN BE DANGEROUS 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:
Resin printers:
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. 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:
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. 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:
Happy printing! csammis fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Feb 6, 2022 |
# ¿ Jul 19, 2021 03:16 |
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# ¿ May 8, 2024 17:01 |
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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 Prusa MK3S+ - $750 kit, $1000 assembled
Prusa Mini - $350 kit, $400 assembled
Ender 3 Pro - $210
Resin Printers Sockser posted:For resin it’s like uh 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:
csammis fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 27, 2021 |
# ¿ Jul 19, 2021 03:16 |
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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.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2021 15:18 |
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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” csammis fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Aug 22, 2021 |
# ¿ Aug 22, 2021 19:17 |
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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?
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# ¿ Aug 27, 2021 04:26 |
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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.
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# ¿ Sep 2, 2021 03:00 |
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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. 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
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# ¿ Oct 25, 2021 19:37 |
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Roundboy posted:Silk PLA 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.
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# ¿ Oct 30, 2021 13:37 |
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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
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# ¿ Nov 2, 2021 02:12 |
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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 ) 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 |
# ¿ Nov 5, 2021 04:15 |
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w00tmonger posted:Re: wall art. I think I found what I'm looking for. 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.
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# ¿ Nov 12, 2021 16:43 |
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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?? 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.
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# ¿ Nov 14, 2021 22:08 |
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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.
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# ¿ Dec 2, 2021 00:28 |
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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
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# ¿ Dec 14, 2021 06:10 |
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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.
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2021 19:27 |
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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!
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# ¿ Dec 25, 2021 18:10 |
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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.
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# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 18:03 |
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GreenBuckanneer posted:second successful print 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.
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# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 06:59 |
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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.
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# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 14:51 |
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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 |
# ¿ Jan 15, 2022 19:58 |
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D-Pad posted:What other options would you suggest? For cable management? Nylon cable wrap
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# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 20:25 |
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Hypnolobster posted:This is the way. There's really no reason to buy filament from random overseas brands that come and go on Amazon. 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.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2022 20:53 |
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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 I’ll add the Aus and Canadian recommendations this weekend!
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# ¿ Feb 5, 2022 01:04 |
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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? 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.
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# ¿ Feb 13, 2022 21:01 |
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Could we not do personal attacks and body shaming in this thread? Thanks.
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# ¿ Feb 20, 2022 21:08 |
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I don’t give a good goddamn whether someone posts on SA or is famous. This isn’t 2005 and this isn’t GBS.
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# ¿ Feb 20, 2022 21:13 |
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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. Nice! I like the little filament-as-indicator holes next to the bits.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2022 05:37 |
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Bad Munki posted:It’s actually just fluorescent paint glopped in there To my old and bad eyes it looked exactly the color of the orange trays in the next pictures
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2022 18:50 |
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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.
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# ¿ May 28, 2022 20:13 |
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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.
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# ¿ May 28, 2022 21:00 |
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Call For Updated Recommendations 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.
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# ¿ Aug 11, 2022 04:04 |
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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.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2022 14:37 |
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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.
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# ¿ Jun 15, 2023 05:21 |
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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 |
# ¿ Aug 11, 2023 03:33 |
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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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# ¿ Sep 26, 2023 23:44 |
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# ¿ May 8, 2024 17:01 |
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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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# ¿ Nov 25, 2023 00:11 |