Random 3D printing chatter

If you're running an 8kg spool (!) I can see why the motor setup (like power-assisted steering) might be useful but for "normal" sized spools I'd have thought you'd do as well with just the pair of rollers on bearings. The buzzer for if it's not unspooling smoothly might be useful but you can guarantee you're not in earshot if it goes off!
I went with a single central spool as ultimately I think I want the spool up top for space-saving. That has to wait until I change extruders for the direct drive version......and that has to wait until I change motherboard....and that has to wait for me to get my finger out and learn Marlin config. Nothing stopping me but time and laziness if I'm brutally honest.....that and getting side-tracked by stuff like the spindle bearings :D
 
Hi all. I'm looking to get in to 3d printing in a hobby way.

Looking at the ender V2 or the prusa mini. That's the price range I'm looking at. Happy with the wait for the prusa.

Keen to really explore and learn.

Two things I wouldn't mine building day on. A panel mount for an xt60 plug, to be mounted into a metal panel, and a wrench with a certain shape which needs to take some torque.

Any other kits to look at to consider?
 
I've only got experience of an Ender 5 Pro but the thing I can suggest is to decide which end of the scale you want to start. Either is valid, just try to avoid doing both. What do I mean? Well, you can either by something cheap with the intention of spending time and money upgrading and improving it OR you can spend the money upfront on something that's good enough to start with.
That was my theory with the Ender 5 Pro (Vs the standard 5) but I've ended up doing a number of upgrades anyway so I'm simply replacing parts I paid more for now.
Your other option, of course, is a complete self-build but that may be too steep a learning curve. I think it would have been for me.
 
Hi all. I'm looking to get in to 3d printing in a hobby way.

Looking at the ender V2 or the prusa mini. That's the price range I'm looking at. Happy with the wait for the prusa.

Keen to really explore and learn.

Two things I wouldn't mine building day on. A panel mount for an xt60 plug, to be mounted into a metal panel, and a wrench with a certain shape which needs to take some torque.

Any other kits to look at to consider?


https://vorondesign.com/
 
Ender V2 owner, happy enough with it but had prusa been an option when I bought I would have probably gone that way. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the V2 but it is very much a fettlers printer from my experience, while the prusas just seem to work from what I've read.

The main thing to consider is whether the smaller bed of the mini will be an issue.
 
Why not?

Loads here did the core XY printer.
I think the thread is about somewhere.

You do learn more by building your own, and you can customize it like mad :)

Well for a start Voron, provides no tech support, no slicer profiles and as the hardware is configurable no firmware. You need a lot of printed parts too, which need to be good quality and tolerance.

Parts need to be self sourced, and probably from multiple stores so delivery will be a while and costly, although there are a couple of kits parts in those kits are questionable.

The recommend route for firmware is Klipper, it's not like marlin where you select setting from a list, you have to basically build your printer config from a very basic template, it doesn't include auto leveling, LCD or filament sensors settings.

I'm not saying Vorons are bad, far from it they are very well designed. Just in my view a bit to much for a noob.

Vorons are all CoreXY or CoreXZ printers, wasn't aware someone on here built one, which one do you know?
 
Well for a start Voron, provides no tech support, no slicer profiles and as the hardware is configurable no firmware. You need a lot of printed parts too, which need to be good quality and tolerance.

Parts need to be self sourced, and probably from multiple stores so delivery will be a while and costly, although there are a couple of kits parts in those kits are questionable.

The recommend route for firmware is Klipper, it's not like marlin where you select setting from a list, you have to basically build your printer config from a very basic template, it doesn't include auto leveling, LCD or filament sensors settings.

I'm not saying Vorons are bad, far from it they are very well designed. Just in my view a bit to much for a noob.

Vorons are all CoreXY or CoreXZ printers, wasn't aware someone on here built one, which one do you know?


We had to do all that here.
I had to learn marlin for months. Which has now helped me dial in my CR-6 SE
Some even went and got 32bit mother boards that never used marlin.

I had my parts printed. Then I printed them again when I got the printer(which Vince has now got).
That's the fun of it :)
 
At the risk of talking to myself, I thought I'd update. When I made this I simply modelled some holes in each end of the part and then ran a reamer through them and made some stub shafts out of aluminium to take the bearings. I wasn't careful enough making sure I reamed the holes concentric to the part so the stub shafts weren't perfectly inline with the roller. That means that as the roller rotated the distance between the top edges of the bearings got longer and shorter. There wasn't any space in the holder for that so mostly the spool just slid round the spindle rather than the spindle rotating in the bearings. I reprinted the spindle with a 12mm through-hole down the centre and then reamed it to size (holes come out undersize on my printer currently) with a cheap import reamer - not really sharp enough when compared to the smaller ones I have that are of decent quality. Made a full length shaft that was around 12mm in the middle (had taper issues with my lathe at the time) and had 8mm diameter ends for the bearings. Used my swing press (that's an overly fancy term for a hammer when you don't have the right equipment to press it in properly) to push the shaft into the spindle, set the bearings on the end and now it turns quite nicely.
When I printed the 1st replacement spindle, there were several lines in the print that didn't look right and I thought they looked like weak points....snap....I was right. I think it was caused by the fact that on this spindle the very end of the filament sticks through a hole (to retain it) into the centre of the spindle. Better ones have this go into a space that isn't right in the middle where the spool spins about. This got hung up on the arm because it didn't have a spindle in it and I think meant that each layer that came about when the tail of the filament got stuck on the holder, under extruded enough that there was no strength there. 2nd one was better (with the old spindle back in place) but didn't look perfect. Wasn't sure it was going to survive the reaming to be honest - sharper reamer would have been a lot better.

Aaaaaand......I've trashed it. One of the bearings had a kink in it somewhere meaning that sometimes it got stuck - you could turn it but it took more force than sliding round the bar. I tried to change the bearing but that side I was slightly undersize on the aluminium shaft so I'd put a dash of threadlock in just as a weak retainer - the proper retaining compound (eg Loctite 638) is for stuff you never want to come apart again. Only issue is I have two blue threadlocks - one Loctite and one something like A43. One of them is medium strength (like you're used to where you can unscrew things but it provides a bit of resistance) and the other is high strength...which should be red. Guess which I'd managed to use! You can heat it to destroy the compound....but then the PETG is going to melt. Now, I have a mangled bearing, mangled shaft end and it's still not off. So, I've gone with the nuclear option and ordered a foot of 8mm ground steel shaft and a foot of 25mm black Delrin. Going with the far less finicky drill a hole through the middle and push a shaft that's already the right size down the hole. Fed up with everything needing massive amounts of overthinking and fiddlyness!
 
We had to do all that here.
I had to learn marlin for months. Which has now helped me dial in my CR-6 SE
Some even went and got 32bit mother boards that never used marlin.

I had my parts printed. Then I printed them again when I got the printer(which Vince has now got).
That's the fun of it :)

Check her out. Now sporting a pi cam and everything.. i have more upgrades to fit (2209's) and some other bits but for now she is working well!!

 
Very nice. Articulated Pi cam no less!
Have you never had trouble with bits of filament - like the angel hair stuff you get sometimes when it oozes in travel or priming - sucked into those fans? I've had it happen a couple of times to my hotend fan and it's a right pain as you have to shut everything down to stop the fan and pull it out with tweezers.
 
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