In reply to bgkast :
ABS chemically melts in the presence of acetone. Look up ABS smoothing, I've used it (or just brushing acetone on) to save a weak print.
In reply to bgkast :
ABS chemically melts in the presence of acetone. Look up ABS smoothing, I've used it (or just brushing acetone on) to save a weak print.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Thanks, I'll look into that. I also tried cranking up the extruder temp up 10 degrees to 250 with the next print.
My filament guide print finished, but still has some layer delamination. Should I brush this with an acetone/abs slurry to fill in the gaps and strengthen it?
It warped off the bed about 1/16 of an inch.
In reply to bgkast :
That's just the nature of ABS. You really need an enclosure and acetone slurry on the bed for successful ABS prints. There's no real reason to use ABS unless you need the thermal resistance. PLA is way nicer to print with I'd recommend either Inland or Overture on Amazon. I prefer to use PLA for anything that isn't going to be subjected to a lot of heat.
I accidentally ordered this spool of ABS and can't find any PLA locally. I have a few rolls of PLA coming Monday.
In reply to Tom_Spangler :
Funny, my first print was a 6x8 to 5x7 speaker adapter bracket.
Since I still had a day to kill until my PLA comes in I decided to take another shot at that filament guide bracket. I glued the first attempt back together using an acetone/ABS slurry, then used the slurry on the bed and made a super high-tech enclosure:
It worked great!
No warping or layers peeling at all. I could barely get the thing unstuck from the bed.
Pretty dramatic change. Any settings changes?
Considering the weather in most of the country, a draft in the room can cause issues with ABS.
No changes except the slurry on the bed and the foil enclosure. The shiny side in foil did a surprisingly good job keeping the heat in.
Since the bracket turned out I gave the fan cover another try.
It turned out good except for a weird little tag on the back. Not sure if that was a hardware or software issue.
To switch over to PLA I cleaned off the bed and while I was at it put on upgraded yellow bed springs.
That's enough printer mods for now. My youngest son wanted to print the dog that comes pre-programmed on the machine.
Why oh why did I ever look at the thread.... sigh
In reply to Mr_Asa :
I have no experience but I hear that with a little dedication, sketchup isn't impossible to learn.
and no project in particular in mind but that didn't stop me. Thanks to this thread, I expect my printer in 5 days!
so a glass bed sounds like a worthwhile upgrade. What else???
In reply to jfryjfry :
If you've got good spatial reasoning skills (and most car guys probably do) none of them are horrible to learn.
Start with the glass bed and then start looking at improvements
Mine arrived!!
A couple of years ago at work we got a Monoprice printer for about $300 on Amazon pretty much as a lark, and found it so useful for creating test fixtures and enclosure prototypes, etc. that it was running all the time. Then we bought a Prusa Mk3 which is an amazing machine, the kit is about $800 with shipping to the US. It took me about 8 hours to assemble. It has automatic compensation for print bed leveling and a spring steel print sheet with PEI coating that adheres magnetically and provides great adhesion for most materials. We have had it running a lot with prints that take 27 hours at 0.1mm resolution. It delivers fantastic results especially using Prusa Slic3r. Lately I have been printing mainly PLA and some flex.
With the first machine I did a lot of ABS prints for a brake duct project, I had to print multiple pieces then solvent weld them together with acetone to create long and complex shapes that couldn't be printed as one piece. The other thing that worked well was printing forms using PVA that I used to layup carbon fiber, then after the epoxy cured I just dissolved the PVA out in the kitchen sink.
Truly amazing how cheap and accessible 3D printing has become. On the high end, check out carbon3D.com, really wish I could justify getting one of those at work.
In reply to jfryjfry :
Get it printing reliably on the glass bed before you do any other "upgrades" otherwise you'll be chasing your tail until you want to throw it in a dumpster. These printers are great machines in stock form.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Done and done.
We have been printing PLA all week and I continue to be impressed with the performance of this machine!
Test dog that comes loaded with the printer:
Test cat (printed with no infill!)
Serpent...the supports were super fun to remove on this one...
And the longest print so far at 12.5 hours, a Valentine's lithophane for the wife:
The ender 3 has been knocking out great prints all week. My favorite is this iris ring box that prints as one assembly.
I also did a 24 hour print for parts for an enclosure. As I finish it I will post the construction process.
This weekend I gave flexible TPU filament a try. It's notoriously hard to print with, especially with a stock ender.
The first two prints went well, the turtle and the gecko. Then while trying to print a phone case for my son... failure. The printer stopped extruding. At first I thought it was a hot end clog, but further troubleshooting found that the stock extruder had kinked up the filament right after the drive.
I swapped on a fancy upgraded all metal extruder that is supposed to work better for tpu on and tried again.
Unfortunately I still developed a feed issue on the second layer. I upped the extrusion rate after the gecko, and I think that may be the issue.
In reply to bgkast :
Please tell me more about the ring box.
In reply to Javelin :
Looks like
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1817180
In reply to Mr_Asa :
That's it. It prints pre-assembled, all you have to do is trim some tabs on the bottom and pop the round outer portion off the base ring (that was the hardest part, a table knife worked around the edge finally did the trick).
bgkast said:The ender 3 has been knocking out great prints all week. My favorite is this iris ring box that prints as one assembly.
I also did a 24 hour print for parts for an enclosure. As I finish it I will post the construction process.
This weekend I gave flexible TPU filament a try. It's notoriously hard to print with, especially with a stock ender.
The first two prints went well, the turtle and the gecko. Then while trying to print a phone case for my son... failure. The printer stopped extruding. At first I thought it was a hot end clog, but further troubleshooting found that the stock extruder had kinked up the filament right after the drive.
I swapped on a fancy upgraded all metal extruder that is supposed to work better for tpu on and tried again.
Unfortunately I still developed a feed issue on the second layer. I upped the extrusion rate after the gecko, and I think that may be the issue.
Did you calibrate your esteps after the extruder change?
Bowden tubes and flexible filaments don't mix well. You pretty much need a direct extruder to succeed with flexibles like TPU and Ninjaflex and even then they are difficult materials to work with.
^- agreed on the direct extruder. I have run several prints with flex and they have come out very nicely with only minimal adjustments.
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