Random 3D printing chatter

Well, with a haul like that the tradition over on Home Shop Machinist would be to tell you:

You SUCK! ;-D

Looks like it should keep you occupied for a while though!
 
@Vince Possibly a silly question for you. Various ads keep pushing the BL Touch at me. I'm not biting but just curious as to how it works. In bigger CNC mills, the machine is already fixed level but the probe is detecting the edges of the part and then running the coordinates of the model relative to that. Does this probe the bed and then mathematically adjust for the fact the bed is not level (ie move the z axis up and down as it traverses around the bed) or does it just probe each corner and then whinge at you to move the adjusters until it goes beep or something?
Just trying to work out how it would be any better than a feeler gauge or a dial gauge.
 
LePhuronn said:
Sooner or later I'm going to have to sort out my bed
Click to expand...

I was going to say that you ought to be able to mill it flat to closer than 0.2mm.....but I've got a feeling I may be confusing you with someone else who had a mill. You could replace the bed with gauge plate (aka ground flat stock) but it's about £55 for a piece 500x250x3mm. That would get you within 0.05mm of flat but you'd presumably then need to buy a new heater element to stick on the bottom. What about a sheet of float glass and some wet and dry sandpaper to bring the top flat? Wouldn't necessarily have to be perfectly parallel to the bottom surface, just flat and then you can adjust it true in the normal fashion. If you google "Float Glass Lapping Plate" you should get the sort of thing. About £25-30 depending on size but re-usable for other things like sharpening too.
 
Managed to do that with external SCSI ribbon cable back in the day. Turns out the combination of adapters I was trying to yee-haw really wasn't a good idea. You've not felt properly alive until you're holding each end and one wire glows red hot, melts through the insulation and comes at you! Nothing was broken though so you may strike lucky with yours.
 
I shall have to peruse the back-catalogue of Whurple when I have some slowly-moving blue bars of impatience to watch. 3D printer content? Why, it's got a 3D-printed slinky vase on the top! :D
 
Well, that sucks. I guess the question is whether the cable killed the board or the board killed the cable. I guess it's kind of academic since both are fried. Might be worth putting a multimeter on all the voltage pins of the PSU (jump start it with a paperclip - yeah, I've got the proper dongle for doing it too...but you can only ever find it when you DON'T need it!) just in case that's out of whack. Although if it is, its only intermittent or it wouldn't have worked long enough to fry the board too.
 
Is it worth checking the board for stains (burn marks) around the VRMs? Also the inside of the PSU for the same. Just in case there's some evidence that the PSU is guilty/not guilty.
 
2D scan them, import into CAD, confirm 1:1 dimensions and then use as a base to add height of chips (or important features) by hand? If you need both sides, you can scan both and then use the hole pattern there's bound to be for mounting a heatsink to align the two.
 
I haven't (don't have a resin printer) but three things stand out on that page:

1. Given that its so non-toxic etc they seem very adamant in the precautions at the bottom that you wear gloves, a mask and wash it off skin immediately.
2. They make much of it being biodegradable and hence eco-friendly....but does that mean your prints will degrade with time?
3. The reviews are from all over the world and shown with the flag from the country. Yet its funny how many people write in German given they claim to be in the UK or USA or France. Perhaps the reviewers aren't certain which country they live in.
 
Rilot said:
Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is controlled via Gcodes. No need to re-compile firmware to change settings. Want to turn on pressure advance? Gcode. Want to enable nozzle cleaning? Gcode. You get the idea.
Click to expand...

Ahh. I suspect I'm a little too far down the learning curve yet. Filed for the future though. Still working on shoehorning a Pi, buck converters and quieter fans. The noise is very bothersome otherwise....no, not from the fans, from my wife's objection to the fan noise!
 
Evening guys. Thought I'd mention some progress. You know, make it look like I'm doing something productive! :D So far, I have the Ender 5 in pieces - kinda the opposite to what I was hoping but such is life. It's the PSU box I've got unbolted, upside down and with the lid off. There's a Pi 3b+ just dropped in there with an SD card loaded with OctoPi (Octoprint for Pi). I've got a multi-pack of buck convertors and one of them will run the Pi. I've soldered wires onto the appropriate PP points for 5V and ground because I want to run it through the protection of the onboard polyfuse but don't really have the room for a micro USB plug. I'm currently waiting on some crimp-on forks so I can attach the buck convertor to the PSU and adjust the voltage before soldering the Pi's wires onto it. Also waiting on the standoffs for the Pi....which are conveniently M2.5 when everything I have is M3 or higher. Then, of course, I found I don't have a tap for an M2.5 thread so that's in the post too. Tap? Yes, my plan is to make a steel plate that I can drill and tap at the right places (according to the schematic) to hold the standoffs. I can then stick that into the PSU box which mounts with everything upside down. Should make everything removable without drilling holes through the reference sticker on the top of the box. I'm also thinking another buck convertor to run a replacement quieter (Noctua) fan or two. Definitely the hot end fan and somehow the PSU fan too - although getting the PSU out of the box to get at the fan without wrecking the reference sticker may be impossible.

Wondering about plugging OctoPi in by USB to the Creality control board. I've got a few choices there: try to solder onto the header on the Creality board (tiny pins/traces), run a cable out of the box and plug it in (fugly) or relocate the creality board so the connection is inside the box. If I do the last one, I'd lose access to the micro SD card slot on the Creality board. Options there are to feed it jobs through OctoPrint or extend the micro SD slot with a ribbon cable that plugs into the micro SD slot, runs 15-48cm and terminates in either a Micro SD slot or an SD slot. Has anyone got any experience with feeding the jobs in through OctoPrint? Am I going to cause myself unnecessary pain if I go that route....or the other?
 
Make sure you have some IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) to wipe down the bed before printing. (Unless anyone more knowledgable can recommend anything else). Mine printed the first couple of parts flawlessly but then nothing would stick to the bed until I'd cleaned it.
 
Perhaps I'd just greased it up with my hands in blissful ignorance of the problems I was creating :D
Some Noctua goodness has arrived from OCUK this morning. Now trying to shoehorn a 20mm thick fan into a 10mm space....cos the 20mm version was quieter and pushed more air. If only I had something to make a new cowling with :eek: They should suggest buying these things in pairs so you have a working one to make parts for the one you have in pieces.....otherwise you'd have to plan ahead! :D
 
Actually, that just gave me a thought. It would have been far easier (and cheaper!) to just print some earplugs for the wife! ;)
Mounting screws for a 10mm thick fan, aren't long enough for a 20mm fan. Told'ja that planning ahead lark was never going to work!
 
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