[dms-discuss] 3D Printers

Fri Mar 16 21:36:29 PDT 2018

I used to be way into 3D printing from about 2007/2008 (when the RepRap
scene was still really new) until around 2012/2013.  Then, after investing
some serious money into what was essentially beta hardware from a startup
out of SF who no longer exists and having said machine break way too easily
for the amount of money I'd spent, I became pretty disenfranchised with the
whole topic of 3D printing and would pretty much just want to curl up into
a ball and pretend I knew nothing about it whenever it came up.  Well, now
I've gotten over the pain of that loss, I'm back in the thick of it, and
I'm picking it all back up really quickly.  Over the past few days I've
learned a whole bunch of new stuff, as well as re-affirmed or corrected
some of my previously gained knowledge about printing.

One thing of note is that we should probably just stick to printing only
PLA right now while any of the machines are still acting up, in order to
simplify the web of variables that can impact print quality.  It used to be
"common knowledge" that PLA was hydrophilic and would soak up moisture from
the air... I even mentioned that to you and Aaron one day when we were all
there and you guys were messing around on the Prusa.  Well, it turns out
that (while true) the claims of such had been greatly exaggerated by some
loud-mouths among the RepRap community.  These days, PLA is considered
pretty safe, moisture exposure-wise, by the wider 3D printing community and
it's actually ABS that is considered the at-risk material for moisture
contamination.  So, being the trendy guy that I am, I'm gonna go with the
flow and change my opinion about PLA vs ABS with regard to moisture.  Also,
beyond the ease of storage/lower risk of moisture absorption aspect, there
are more reasons to choose PLA over ABS... lower print temperatures, less
warping, no toxic fumes, better bed adhesion, etc.

Unfortunately, our Prusa is an older Prusa that uses 3mm filament, but the
Printrbot uses 1.75mm filament... so we won't be able to do any direct
comparison of a given batch of materials' quality by loading it from one
machine to the other.  It might make sense to retrofit the Prusa with a
1.75mm extruder and hot-end some day.  1.75mm is easier to handle (not as
stiff because it's thinner) and, potentially more importantly, I've got
like 15kg or so of 1.75mm spools lying around in some dry-boxes that I
built (approx. $300 of PLA) that I'd gladly share with DMS.  All the newer
generations of Prusas use 1.75mm, and since it's all open-source hardware
it seems like a good idea to upgrade ours as we can to bring it more
up-to-date with what a current MK2 or 2.5 Prusa would look like.  This
would allow us to lean on the greater 3D printing community as a whole a
bit more, by being able to look for printing profiles from more established
makers with matching machines.

I actually just bought a Prusa i3 MK3 kit for myself, to be delivered
late-April.  I like to work slow and meticulous, so I'm expecting the
assembly process to take me like 10-12 hours over the course of a couple
days.  By the time I'm done with all that I should be chock full of ideas
for ways to improve the hardware of DMS's Prusa.  I'll be sure to let
everyone know when assembly-time comes, as I'm sure there will be a lot to
be learned by assembling one of these machines by hand and I'll be doing it
at DMS since I don't have much room at home.

I'm almost done getting the Printrbot completely calibrated and it's making
amazing prints now.  I'll have some photos to share soon with some
explanations of what changes I made to get what improvements between each
print.  Here's a preview of some of the latest results.

Meg's gonna paint the Maneki-Neko and then we'll bring him back to DMS so
he can help us get that laser cutter!

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:34 PM, Roland Synnestvedt <rsynnest at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dude nice! Minor update from me, last week I had an acquaintance from
> Denmark with me and he built his own Prusa which he uses pretty regularly.
> We tried to dial in the settings a bit. We were just printing 1cm cubes in
> the center to avoid dealing with the bed unevenness which was definitely
> the biggest issue, so good call taking that on. He did mention our X belt
> looks loose. He also sent some pics to a 3d printing expert friend who said
> the layer separation in the prints may be due to old filament (we've been
> using the pink roll). Having the Printrbot will be great to compare and see
> if the filament is bad.
>
> I took some bad pics, pasted below where you can kinda see the layer
> separation grooves in the side which should be smooth (there's also the
> obvious problem near the bottom too but that's an easier fix, I think
> caused by a rogue dangler in this case).
>
> On Mar 14, 2018 6:13 PM, "Ryan McKay" <yakcm.nayr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Indeed, many thanks to Alex, Roland, and Aaron for getting the Prusa this
>> far along!
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 11:01 AM, yourcurtainsareugly <
>> yourcurtainsareugly at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Great! Thanks for the effort and the update. FWIW, the test print I did
>>> Monday came out ok, if a little squished at the bottom, and it should be
>>> greatly improved by being able to tweak the bed.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 8:04 AM, Emily Schleiner <
>>> cordial.emily at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, that is awesome! Thanks Ryan
>>>>
>>>> On Mar 14, 2018 7:35 AM, "Alexander Pedersen" <
>>>> alexander.dean.pedersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That's awesome
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 5:11 AM Ryan McKay <yakcm.nayr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I put some time in to the 3D printers at the space over the past
>>>>>> couple days.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tried to improve upon the state of the Prusa i3.  I haven't had too
>>>>>> much luck in actually getting it to print much better than before, but I
>>>>>> did fix it up with an adjustable bed-leveling system.  That took a lot of
>>>>>> time so I actually have more time invested in mechanical fixes than
>>>>>> software tweaks on that particular machine as of yet.  Not ready to give up
>>>>>> hope on further slicer calibrations (print settings) yielding some
>>>>>> improvements as of yet, but I am starting to suspect that there are further
>>>>>> mechanical issues to be dealt with (getting some oscillations in the X and
>>>>>> Y dimensions from layer to layer... loose belts?) beyond the, now solved,
>>>>>> issue of the print bed being super uneven.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then I fixed up one of the little wooden guys... got it printing
>>>>>> great now, in relative terms.  It's still not as nice as what I'd like it
>>>>>> to be, but it's definitely printing better than the Prusa right now.  I'd
>>>>>> say we could probably start telling visitors that we actually DO have a
>>>>>> functional 3D printer now, instead of the typical "we have some but they're
>>>>>> all broken" response... the only potential problem is that this one only
>>>>>> has a 12x12x10 cm print volume.  I did all the setup, calibration, and
>>>>>> driving of this little guy with my laptop, so maybe tomorrow I'll try to
>>>>>> get it running of one of the computers in the space and then transfer over
>>>>>> my calibrations.  Once that's done I'll be able to show anyone who's
>>>>>> interested how to use it, and I'll probably write up a little quick start
>>>>>> guide that could hopefully get a (decently tech-savvy) person from 3D model
>>>>>> to 3D print.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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