Random 3D printing chatter

As I've mentioned a few times, I've been designing and testing a paintball box magazine that works with the Planet Eclipse EMF100 (and potentially the DYE DAM). My new MicroSwiss Direct Drive was giving me lots of headaches, but seems like flow rate (and possibly an overtightened Eccentric nut on the gantry) was the cause of my issues. Field testing of the badly printed and assembled parts went extremely well, and both box mags performed stunningly.

Anyway... since I'll be looking to selling this in mostly kit form, and some 'completed', I had been relying on electronic boards to do the control from other manufacturers. These cost from $20 to $40, and the ones I am using are getting very rare. So.. where did this 3D printed adventure lead me? Designing my own programs on a Digispark ATTiny85 dev board (around $3.20 each, and obviously I'll need a lot of other compenents), and potentially having my own PCB's made up in order to do everything I need. We'll see. But I did not expect to be going this route at all.

At the end of this, I 'may' end up with a design that is completely my own with no other manufactures parts. Right now, I'm using the electronic board, and drive components from a paintball hopper/loader, but with my own printed system to hold/contain it all. I may end up making my own drive system (although the 'cogs' part does concern me for longevity).
 
Chuk_Chuk said:
No I didn't. I will try that with my next print.
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Definitely do, there will still be a bit of resin mixed in with that IPA and the water will get rid of it.

If you don’t dry it after the water mostly all that will happen is chalky residue but if you dab it dry you won’t even get that.

I blow mine off with an airbrush when I can but a bit of paper towel is fine.
 
Going to be trialing making some form of printed planetary gear arrangement for the gear drive system. Not quite sure how this is gonna turn out, but it will sure be fun. It needs to be high ratio (so small central cog with big outer ring, which will be interesting), and given that it is possibly only going to be around 60cm for the out ring, this might be challenging for durability. We will see.

There looks to be a 20 dollar plug in for fusion 360 for making planetary gears..i may buy that to make my life easier.
 
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montymint said:
dipping my toes back into FDM with a prusa mini, hopefully it'll be here on Tuesday
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Damn you and the horse you rode in on :cry:

Just ordered a Prusa MINI+ with the filament sensor and two sheets in black along with a kilo of their PETG and a kilo of their PLA.

For some reason, the black version with two sheets is cheaper than the black/orange version with one sheet.

Leadtime is showing as 1-2 weeks.

The order was sponsored by Martin Miller's.

I have absolutely no idea what I'll be doing with it, I've never used a 3D printer before and I know nothing about them, except *shiny*

kWbmqeq.png
 
Ordering more crap than I'm actually printing LOL.

1) Just received my insulation for bottom of my ender 3's heated bed. 10 dollars :)
-----Should even the temps on the bed out, be more efficient and hopefully reduce PETG warping.

2) Just ordered a CR Touch on special offer for $29. Should be here Sunday.
---- totally wasn't going to get one till at least another week, but should HOPEFULLY put an end to my guess work on bed level height. will prod update to jyers after this.


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Now.. I still need to find a deal on a Dual Z axis kit. Either the belt drive or the motor variant. Both seem the same price surprisingly. Prefer a kit with two screws so at least they are similar movement.

Then finally get or make myself an enclosure. It's winter here and temps will drop rapidly. Machine is currently next to window so likely to see 17-19C at times I assume maybe less.

All this to get to a place where I can hopefully reliably print PETG, and maybe TPU etc, without it warping.

---

In terms of the actual machine I've spent ~$400 so far (not including materials, glues etc).

Ender 3 V2: 250ish
MicroSwiss Direct Drive and all metal hotend: $99
CR Touch sensor: $29
Insulation on bed underside: $10
Yellow Springs: $10

Est cost of other parts:
Dual Z: $40
Enclosure: $30 to $50.

Getting upwards the $500 mark for a basic printer. Hopefully some of you can see that it might be worthwhile going for a better machine like the Ender 5 Plus right out of the gate.
 
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Scougar said:
Ordering more crap than I'm actually printing LOL.

1) Just received my insulation for bottom of my ender 3's heated bed. 10 dollars :)
-----Should even the temps on the bed out, be more efficient and hopefully reduce PETG warping.

2) Just ordered a CR Touch on special offer for $29. Should be here Sunday.
---- totally wasn't going to get one till at least another week, but should HOPEFULLY put an end to my guess work on bed level height. will prod update to jyers after this.


------

Now.. I still need to find a deal on a Dual Z axis kit. Either the belt drive or the motor variant. Both seem the same price surprisingly. Prefer a kit with two screws so at least they are similar movement.

Then finally get or make myself an enclosure. It's winter here and temps will drop rapidly. Machine is currently next to window so likely to see 17-19C at times I assume maybe less.

All this to get to a place where I can hopefully reliably print PETG, and maybe TPU etc, without it warping.

---

In terms of the actual machine I've spent ~$400 so far (not including materials, glues etc).

Ender 3 V2: 250ish
MicroSwiss Direct Drive and all metal hotend: $99
CR Touch sensor: $29
Insulation on bed underside: $10
Yellow Springs: $10

Est cost of other parts:
Dual Z: $40
Enclosure: $30 to $50.

Getting upwards the $500 mark for a basic printer. Hopefully some of you can see that it might be worthwhile going for a better machine like the Ender 5 Plus right out of the gate.
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I've been Dual Z for awhile on my ender 3. It seemed to help some issues and using Tilt Adjust in klipper was the equivalent of G34 in marlin.

I've decided to do away with Dual Z now though and I'm switching to a belt driven Z axis, no more lead screws. Also switching to Linear rails. I have all the parts printed but waiting on last delivery to be able to start.

I also have a Keenovo silicon heat bed, MIC6 235x235 tooling plate and Omron SSR to be fitted. I just havent got the time lately to mess around with it.
 
Dempsey22 said:
I've been Dual Z for awhile on my ender 3. It seemed to help some issues and using Tilt Adjust in klipper was the equivalent of G34 in marlin.

I've decided to do away with Dual Z now though and I'm switching to a belt driven Z axis, no more lead screws. Also switching to Linear rails. I have all the parts printed but waiting on last delivery to be able to start.

I also have a Keenovo silicon heat bed, MIC6 235x235 tooling plate and Omron SSR to be fitted. I just havent got the time lately to mess around with it.
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The only real benefit on linear rails I see it potentially less maintenance. Reviews don't seem to show any real print quality improvement, or at least not the one's I've watched.

Interested to know about your belt driven Z-axis though? What's the benefit/cost? (I have a DD on my gantry so weight mitigation is a concern for me.)

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/ender3/comments/fpsds6/belt_driven_z_insane_print_quality/

Is this ^^^ what you are talking about? Looks interesting!!!

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Also.. just found the insulation I put on the bottom of the bed is too thick, so will probably need to hard raise the bed a bit, or figure out something to lower the rear (Y) stepper motor and move the home switch up.
 
Scougar said:
oh dear god... I'm going down the rabbit hole of looking up upgrades after this.

Gulf 3 point levelling system
Gulf heated bed (better than stock).
Linear rails etc...

Dempsey I hate you lol.
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All my stuff for the conversion is from Aliexpress inc the linear rails.

It was around 70 euros delivered for all the belts, pulleys, bearings , linear rails. I'm not expecting unbelievable improvements but I hate lead screws. Its one area of the printer I had issue with from day one. That and v wheels.

Linear rails are more of a maintenance thing, I just dont want to be having to be replacing v wheels.

I'm also running direct drive. I have the speed drive mount fitted with a Satsana remix I made. It allows dual 5015 fans, 4020 hot end fan, BLtouch, also has a mount for an ADXL345 which I have to wire soon.

I think this is the last of the upgrades and it will be time to build a Voron 2.4 or else RatRig Vcore 3.
 
Been tinkering with my Anet A8+ for a while now, upgraded to Pi control with Octaprint, got myself reasonably familiar with Linux and RaspberryPi OS so just ordered all the parts I need to build a Voron 2.4 CoreXY plus all the 3d printed parts I need as I don't rate the Anet for ABS.

Pretty pleased with how the Anet is printing PLA though, size is within 1% which is an easy scale on SuperSlicer and only the tiniest amount of Ringing in the odd place. I plan to avoid that on the Voron with an accelerometer on the toolhead.

Will start with the V6 hotend and then decide if I need to switch to Mosquito/Dragon later. I mainly print parts for model aircraft but the plan is to start printing entire aircraft with Foaming LW-PLA for sale, these can take around 24 hours of printing to complete so I am hoping theVoron with cut this time significantly.
 
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