Random 3D printing chatter

[Cenedd]

What's this? Well, I was whinging at @LePhuronn for selfishly having a 3D printer. Why? Well, I'd been watching a YouTube series and after a while the incessant "I needed a <thing> so I just printed this and it's perfect!" gets seriously irritating. So, in other words I think this comes down to basic jealousy
LePhuronn said he would recommend the Ender he has and suggested that @Vince would enjoy a natter too. So rather than clutter up his build thread (which you should probably check out here) I started this one. The intention is for it to be less specific than the other threads. It's not specifically about 'Which one should I buy?' but mainly to get a little less clueless and also make sure that if I do buy a lemon, it's by informed choice with the intention of upgrading it.

So, what am I looking at? LePhuronn has an Ender 3 Pro but suggested that the Ender 5 is superior. As far as I can tell, there is an Ender 5 Pro that seems to be what you'd probably mod the 5 into but supplied that way out the box. I'm sort of thinking along the lines of if I'm going to spend a couple of hundred quid, I may as well spend a little more and do it properly.....but I'm not yet clued up enough to know where that line is yet and I'm hoping to bypass the buying a lemon and learning this by regretting it stage. Well, if I'm honest, I'm hoping someone will just hand me all the knowledge on a plate.....but I'm interested enough that the laziness will go away eventually

What do I want to print? Well, I'm trying to work through Clough42's Electronic Lead Screw and build one for my lathe. If you get to part 17 (no, seriously!) he's starting to 3D print parts for the control panel. There are buttons printed in Ninjaflex and spacers etc. That's the sort of thing I have in mind. General prototyping, brackets, fixtures etc. To be honest, I suspect that this will be a new hammer along the lines of "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

If people want to chip in with anything else, feel free - that's sort of the point of this thread.

 

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That's cool. If you come up with anything - printable or otherwise - that stops the unwanted distractions (in normal times these are often called 'customers'!) then let me know....or don't and make yourself a fortune!

I'm at the stage of being blissfully unaware of the material differences and the requirements for an enclosure. I'm trying lately to reduce the amount of airborne stuff that might kill me prematurely. Preferring instead to slowly drink myself to death Although I am trying to use at least some of the beer tokens for something less ephemeral!

I'm thinking of the space on top of a row of floor-level cupboards for the printer and it's a home-office I share with my wife so poisoning her would probably not go down so well too!
My attention is massively split lately and the conflict between when I feel like doing things and when it's allowable (milling the other side of a thin stud wall to where my wife is on a video conference for work is a recipe for industrial injury!) so I think something bundled would be better. Don't mind putting it together but don't want to be slowly selecting and sourcing individual parts as an entry point - I don't have the knowledge at this stage and I think my enthusiasm is likely to last longer if I start getting useable parts off it relatively quickly.
I'll have a watch of that vid when I can - mobile currently.

 

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Cheers Vince. I know what you're getting at. By the time I'd been through all that the enthusiasm would have run out. It's a balance between buying something good enough that you don't get discouraged (or waste the money) but not so good that you can't justify the cost.
One issue I've spotted so far is that the space I'd got earmarked for it is too shallow for it to fit - finally found some dimensions of the printer rather than its max print size. A slight rejig in plans should sort that though. Presumably whatever it sits on needs to stable (ie not wobbly) but we're not talking the same rigidity requirements as a mill or a lathe where the (cutting) forces are significantly higher?

 

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I'm back after a random 24 hour ban

Maybe the admins were offended by you having a 3D printer too!
An Ender 5 Pro may have just fallen into my basket last night. So much for being restrained and not jumping the gun! I went with a UK seller (forest-based, if you get my meaning). It was cheaper purchasing from a popular far-east supplier and shipped from either Spain or Czech Republic.....but if it got stopped for VAT - which is now payable on EU imports - then it would very quickly not be cheaper.

Also bothered to read the reviews which suggested that Ender's supplied PLA filament isn't actually the right size (out of tolerance) for the better teflon tubing. So I ordered a spool of black stuff and Murphy's law dictates that's going to turn up first.

There's something sort of satisfying about being able to print improvements for itself - and yet also irritating at the same time....'cos if it was that easy, why did they not just supply it like that in the first place?! Ach, there's just no pleasing some people eh? (ie me! )

 

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Apparently they've just added slicing into Fusion 360 so I may have to give that a try as well. Video that I'll be watching when I have a sec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWFRh-MdKxo
Of course, this also means I need to get better at 360 and not just swear, give up and go back to SketchUp!

 

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I shall be having a play with a few, no doubt. The only reason I was looking at the Fusion 360 slicer is purely that it's already in the modeling software I'm using...or, perhaps more accurately, trying to use!

Since it should be delivered tomorrow, I meant to ask: can anyone recommend a good divorce lawyer? Fairly sure I may need one by the end of tomorrow!

Have been prematurely* browsing Thingiverse. I think this could actually end up saving me money Mainly because I'm browsing Thingiverse going "Ooh, I may have to print one of those" rather than browsing the rainforest and dropping hard-earned cash on things I probably** don't need!

*premature in that I've not yet got the printer, let alone mastered the slicing and got anything at all printed!
**the odds are quite well understood on this one!

 

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Well, no divorce but I did get both the disapproving and disappointed looks! Along with many questions with a negative theme along the lines of "Why?!". So, progress? Yup, she's built and ghetto'd onto the workbench. It wasn't much too shallow but the front feet were on the top of the door so you can foresee the disaster that would have occurred sooner or later!

Don't think I've done too badly on the cable management front. Might check out some of the 3D printable clips when I get a bit further.



Now printing: Cat! Why? Laziness. It was on the supplied card so it seemed the quickest way of getting something out to test it. The default temps of 180°C nozzle and 45°C bed (iirc) seem to be far too low compared to a quick search. I increased the bed to 60°C and the nozzle to 200°C. The first few rows seem to be liney (for lack of better terminology) so I've increased the nozzle to 210°C but it sounds like it could need to be higher by a smidge. 215°C seems to be one I've heard a few times.



Slicers then people. I've heard people mention (on this thread and elsewhere) Cura, Prusa and Fusion 360. What do you use and more importantly, why? An "I use slicer A because it's the first one I tried and it seems to work" is perfectly fine but "I use slicer B because I tried A and found it made the extruder fall off*" is probably more interesting.

*exaggerating, obviously.

 

[Cenedd]

When you say the first few rows, do you mean literally the first 1 or 2 layers of plastic? If so it was liney because it's a raft, big, thick and a waste of filament, lol.

You may well be right that it was simply rough rafting and the slight spacing between rows caused it. It does seem smoother at the higher temp though so I may have stumbled on the right temp. I'll probably give the temp tower LePhuronn suggested a go and see where I get.

Show pictures of the final print and we can see what the "liney" is all about

Havent finished print the damn cat yet! It's 4½ hours in so far! You can see it in the pic in my previous post if you click for a larger version. It's like a mat where the filament loops back on itself at the end of each row. Could definitely be just rafting though. It took me a while to realise (as the layers slowly built up) that what appeared to be poor finish was actually deliberate texture in the model! Ah noobs!

If slicing is a new feature in Fusion though I'd avoid for a while.

You're almost certainly correct.....which it why I'm certainly going to be stupid enough to try it Sometimes you've got to make life difficult for yourself and fail hard! On the lathe I was told I couldn't turn HSS (High Speed Steel - which is hard as hell) and I commented that it was a good job nobody had told me that before I'd successfully done it Although, I'd not recommend it on what's referred to as a "small" lathe despite weighing around 15 stone!

I think first project/upgrade is going to have to be quieting the fans. The steppers are almost silent - or at least inaudible over the incessant drone. Setting the fan speed down from 255 just seems to make the pitch lower but more irritating and I suspect it may be only the part cooling fan that's affected. I've already worked out that there's a fan in the control box (low-hanging fruit that one I reckon!) and of the two on the head, one is for cooling the hot end (perversely, the bit you're trying to heat up) and the side blower for part cooling. That last one was the least obvious as I thought at first it was some sort of push-pull setup. Does anyone have any recommendations for either fans or ducts to reduce the noise from the head?

 

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Cool, cheer LePhuronn. Consider me educated! ....well, a little
Quick (well, I hope!) strain relief from Thingiverse loaded into Fusion, scaling problem solved (it was initially 10x size!) and sliced ready to go. Gotta give it a try to see if it works or not!

Cat finally finished after 5 hours 40!
Some stringing between the ears. Is this just a normal artefact of printing or does it indicate some tweaks are necessary to temp or something?

 

[Cenedd]

Other than that though that's a pretty damn fine print.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, today nothing will stick to the bed so I'm now getting the fails they talk about.

"stringing"? You're using proper terms this early on? Stringing is caused mostly by incorrect retraction settings and the hot end temperature set too high. Have a read.
I'd suggest grabbing a calibration cube from Thingiverse and printing to see how dimensionally accurate (or not) you are. And don't print with a raft, you don't need it for flat faces.

Well, it was either that or cobwebbing! I shall have a good read and try some calibrations once I can get them to stick. Out of wifely patience now!

 

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I'm thinking it might be that the bed has drooped. Have re-levelled it but no time to re-test it now

 

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Gave the nozzle a wipe - and got the obligatory burn. Knew it was hot (well, obviously) but it went through the cloth quicker than I thought. Managed to kick off a print and it just about stuck while it printed the brim. Baby-sat it for a bit and it printed most of the first of the temp tower steps. Came at the hour and a half poin to find the part moved across the bed and tumbleweed filling the space

Thanks for the IPA suggestion, I was pondering whether that was a good idea. Seems like it may have helped it stick - which was absolutely no issue for the two prints yesterday - but I'm definitely getting nozzle ooze. Like you tell it to preheat the nozzle and when it gets up to temp, it starts slowly extruding only the feed isn't running. Tried stepping the extruder back a mm or two but I'm not sure it managed it....perhaps it wasn't hot enough to have fully melted yet.

Incidently the Fusion 360 sliced print (strain relief for the bed cable) yesterday came out ok. Not the best quality - it looked like draft mode - but I suspect that was the slicer settings for speeds and feeds. Also the bridged holes that should take a cable tie were pretty much filled but I suspect that's probably the stringing as it was at 215°C like the strung ears on the cat. Also have Cura installed so will compare and contrast settings in that.

 

[Cenedd]

Hmmm. Temp tower got a lot further after the IPA wipe (cheers LePhuronn). It had done 220, 215, 210, 205, 200 and 195 successfully. It started 190 and I came back to find the print nozzle in contact with the part and moving it about - so I don't think it had happened long ago. All of them exhibit stringing in the same places with possibly 215 showing slightly less. 195 has definite artefacts so is presumably too cold and I'm guessing that's why 190 fell apart but without time lapse (yeah, I'm already thinking Octoprint) I'm not sure. Thing that puzzles me is that I wound the extruder back a few mm and before long it starts losing steps as it can't pull hard enough. I gave it some assistance and the filament broke free....and yet it was still oozing for quite a while. This is at 200°C. Maybe I'll try the white that came with it and see if it's a filament issue....although I'm not sure how since yesterday's prints were no issue. The spool was vacuum sealed with dessicant too.

 

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Thanks for the replies guys. I'll have to get back to this. Two things: I seem to have had a bad reaction to rosin fumes (that I've not previously) and now it feels like my lungs have been fed through a cheese grater. Don't think it's the dreaded virus as it started after the soldering and I have no other symptoms. Also, I have clear enough mental space to look after my mum...and I can't say it's a conversation I'm looking forward to. I'll be back to this - probably sporadically - but didn't want to leave the impression I didn't appreciate the time you guys have taken to give advice.

 

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Cheers guys, much appreciated.

 

[Cenedd]

Still motors and pulleys strapped to the ends of the extrusions, however

...only now they have a bed that is only supported at one edge instead. That's persumably why people seem to be trying to print a second Z support so it's held at the front too. I wonder why they didn't have the bed fixed at the bottom and the Z gantry crawl up and down riding on the corner pillars - with a leadscrew drive as persumably that's more accurate in the tiny steps required than belt drive.

 

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It's looking good so far. Here's a question - and it is just that, I'm not saying I know the answer, 'cos I don't! If you've got two leadscrews on the same axis like that, is it better to run them with separate steppers like you have or is it better to belt them together and drive them off one stepper? I'm not sure which is likely to keep them more in sync.

 

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Certainly looks pretty. Please keep us updated with what sort of effect it has. Found lots of articles showing things like hotend or direct drive replacements and they tend not to say it's made things better - several articles saying things like it was problematic but they expect to improve through tweaks but never then update the article. So it'd be interesting to see if/what it improves for you.
Personally the first thing I think I need to upgrade is the fans....as I'm not allowed to run it while my wife's in the (home-) office otherwise

 

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Can't hear the steppers at all to be honest. Partly that may be that it has the upgraded "silent" stepper driver....but it could just be that once the fan noise comes down, the stepper noise will come to the fore! Like watercooling where you quieten one thing and then you're able to hear something else that irritates you instead!
I'm thinking some of these should sort it: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/noctua-nf-a4x20-pwm-5000rpm-fan-40mm-fg-05v-nc.html

 

[Cenedd]

Pi 3B+ and Playstation Eye ('cos it was cheap) delivered. OctoPi installed on an 8GB card and endless failures to do anything useful. HAProxy failing to start, fstab not working, SSH not generating keys, "LSB failed to resize the root", wouldn't join the wifi.
Reflashed it, same thing. Changed SD card and bingo. Creepy spycam for your 3D printer. Shall be testing out Spaghetti Detective once I have things back together - some buck convertors to work out first!